The
Cleveland Plain Dealer
www.cleveland.com
Mothers
warned about tainted fish
By KATHERINE RIZZO
Thursday, July 27, 2000
Great Lakes mothers should be warned about
contaminated fish and the damage that invisible, tasteless
chemicals can do to a fetus or young child, a U.S.-Canadian
commission said yesterday.
The International Joint Commission said the
eight Great Lakes states and two lakeside provinces haven't
targeted their fish consumption warnings to the families
that make sport fish a large part of their diets.
The warnings "are not clear enough, and
they're not getting to the people that need the information,"
said Thomas Baldini, who heads the American section of
the body that oversees the shared waterways.
A particular frustration, he said, was the
states' preferred method of distributing the advisories:
as another piece of information included with a fishing
license.
If the family member who catches the fish
isn't the one who cooks it, those warnings often get lost,
said Commissioner Alice Chamberlain.
"We need a simplified, clear warning
in the case of children and women of child-bearing years,"
she said.
Dr. David Carpenter, a public health physician
and researcher at the University of Albany in New York
state, said studies of Lakes Michigan and Ontario showed
behavioral changes and reductions in intelligence in the
children of women who ate contaminated sport fish and
a reduction of thyroid function in children who consumed
contaminated fish.
Ohio Department of Health epidemiology investigator
Robert Johnson, whose area of expertise is fish, said
that state is working with WIC groups and the Ohio Environmental
Council to try to distribute more copies of the fish advisory
and a toll-free information number in Ohio, 1-800-755-GROW.
State officials began looking for more ways
to distribute their warnings after reading studies that
showed women tended to do less of the fishing and have
less awareness of the contamination advisories, said Johnson.
"I would describe what we're doing as a work in progress,"
he said.
(c)2000 THE PLAIN DEALER. Used with permission.
