Michael Graham Richard | Treehugger
CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia
Coal burning most likely to blame
With mercury concentrations in the upper layers of the oceans having tripled since the industrial revolution, it's not surprising that certain kinds of fish are not recommended for pregnant women (and might not be so great for those of us who aren't pregnant either). A new study gives further details on the scale of the problem and seems to disprove those who claimed that mercury concentrations in open-ocean fish weren't going up.
A team from the University of Michigan compiled and re-analyzed 3 previous studies on yellowfin tuna caught near Hawaii. They found that the concentration of mercury in that species increased at least 3.8% per year from 1998 to 2008. That's quite the increase! Remember the power of compound interest…
Where is all that mercury coming from?
