PCB News

New Jersey PCB warning worries industry;
Will consumers stop eating all kinds of fish?

February 4, 2003
JOHN CURRAN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTIC CITY - The warning to vacationers in Mexico is simple: "Don't drink the water."

In New Jersey, the fish are the problem: A new warning about contaminated seafood - the third in a year - has the fishing industry worried about consumer reaction.

The government-issued advisory last week said elevated levels of PCBs in bluefish, striped bass, and other species taken from some New Jersey waters make them inadvisable to eat on a regular basis, especially by pregnant women and small children.

Translation: Too much of a bad thing can be really bad. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used as insulating material, are believed to cause cancer.

Although the state Department of Environmental Protection's advisory focused on 13 freshwater and saltwater species, those who make their living on the water fret that consumers may quit eating fish altogether or reduce their intake. Not all rivers and lakes were tested.

"Our group is worried," said Nils Stolpe, a spokesman for the Garden State Seafood Association. "The tendency for consumers is to sort of generalize. They read about PCBs in New Jersey bluefish, then they generalize that to all New Jersey fish. That's of concern."

According to the advisory, bluefish and striped bass should be eaten only once a year, but avoided entirely by pregnant women, women who want to become pregnant, infants, and small children.

"We hope this information will allow families to make informed choices about the levels of fish consumption in their diet," said Bradley Campbell, DEP commissioner.

It wasn't the first such warning.

In July, the state issued an advisory about unsafe levels of mercury in 21 species of fish.

Earlier last year, a warning was issued about dioxin contamination in the blue claw crab.

"It shows that we're still living in the legacy of our toxic past," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club. "It's the gift that keeps giving, unfortunately."

Although they've been out of production since 1979, PCBs refuse to go away.

Typically, they enter the environment through storm water. When it rains, the water penetrates PCB-contaminated soil at hazardous waste sites or washes over tainted equipment in old factories and runs off into rivers, lakes, and streams.

Underwater, the problem is compounded by a process known scientifically as bioaccumulation: A big fish that is already contaminated eats a smaller fish, consuming the smaller one's contamination. Then the big fish gets eaten by another fish, which inherits the contamination of both. So it goes, up the food chain.

For veteran fishermen, the latest warning came as no shock.

"It's always been fairly serious," said Tom Fote, legislative chairman of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, which represents recreational fishing clubs.

"The advisories on bluefish and striped bass have been out there for a long time. And recreational fishermen have changed their habits. I used to come home with a cooler full of bluefish, clean them, and give what I couldn't use to my neighbors. But I don't do that now. I like my neighbors," Fote said.

In New Jersey, sport fishermen are permitted to harvest striped bass, but it is illegal to sell them.

One commercial fisherman said he worries about backlash from the PCB alert. "We've been down this road before," said Jim Lovgren, 46, of Point Pleasant. "It affects us economically."

Lovgren fishes for summer flounder, squid, and whiting. He said the state's warning ignored the fact that the actual levels of PCB contamination in many New Jersey fish have gone down in recent years.

It's the state's standards that are getting stricter, he said.

Environ

"The story within the story is that while it's fine and impressive to advise people about a risk, the real message here is that we've got to get to the sources of these contaminations," said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action.

"It's not enough to say, 'Eat less of these fish.' We've got to a have a program with a future in which we don't have to worry about that," Zipf said.