Methyl Mercury Filled Fish

The following was a paper I wrote for English. Although I should have made improvements on this paper before posting I won't because this is really just FYI. I chose to write this paper because some students in my class said that the mother was overprotective because she did not want her daughter eating tuna. Oh how ill informed this generation is. My generation. We should be asking more questions. We should be protecting our environment. Instead we sit on facebook and such seeing what everyone else is doing. I want to make a difference. I want to know where my food comes from, if it has poison in it, or if I am told to limit certain foods I love. I don't want to be in the dark. I will search for answers...

Methyl Mercury Filled Fish

      Are Fish safe to eat? Did you know that omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in tuna fish, are known to ease the pain of arthritis and is essential in the growth and development of young children? Tuna is widely known and loved. In, “Tune of The Tuna Fish” Sandra Steingraber tells about how her daughter came to love tuna. She is concerned with her new favorite food and is torn on what to tell her about why she cannot have it every day. Her daughter finds her editorial on the effects of methyl mercury on the human being. Upon finding her paper she is worried and scared about whether or not she will get poisoned from eating this toxin filled fish. Sandra shows her young daughter the factory that is burning the highly toxic coal whose pollutants get transferred to the lakes, rivers, and oceans. She then explains why they choose green energy that does not harm the environment to show her daughter how we can make a difference. Our environment is becoming so polluted that we cannot eat fish out of the ocean more than once a week. Nowadays we cannot even drink tap water without worrying its too harmful to our bodies. If we value life at all we must change our habits and switch to renewable sources of energy. We need to start now to save what’s left of our dying planet. 

    Steingraber is concerned for her daughters health. Upon eating a tuna sandwich at a party her daughter discovers this fish tastes amazing. Steingraber knows that tuna in not the safest fish for a child to eat due to the effects of methyl mercury. “Methyl mercury has been shown to paralyze migrating fetal brain cells and halt their cell division. As a result, the architecture of the brain is altered in ways ways that can lead to learning disabilities, delayed mental development, and shortened attention spans in later childhood.” (p. 664) Upon revisiting the subject, Steingraber sees these harmful effects of tuna are too great a risk to allow her innocent child to consume tuna again. The tuna her daughter loves is simply too toxic. It is not right that we should have to limit tuna to only one serving per month, when it should be a wonderful, brain enriching food for our children. The first time my children tried tuna they loved it. They, of course, wanted to eat a lot of it, being in that it was a newly discovered food to them. I did not know how harmful tuna still was, but upon reading “Tune of the Tuna Fish” I got on the ball about tuna’s content and potential harmful effects on my precious children. Being a concerned mother of two, I would not feed my children tuna more than the recommended limit of one serving per month if even that. I would rather choose an alternate form of seafood till the mercury level is drastically reduced in their loved tuna.

    Furthermore, the cause of this tuna toxicity is mainly due to source of energy consumption currently used, burning coal. For example, In LaPorte, where I grew up, 225 is lined with power plants all burning this toxic coal. Thinking back to my childhood and remembering all the “shelter in place” warnings we were so accustomed to I realize this is not where I want my children growing up. Steingraber mentions that the coal burning factory is the most viewable source of pollutants for her young daughter. Steingraber says, “On the far bank floated the vaporous emissions form New York State Electric and Gas Corporation’s Cayuga Plant, whose coal-burning stacks were plainly visible against an otherwise cloudless sky. it’s one of the state’s biggest emitters of mercury. In the year my daughter was born, the Cayuga tacitly release 323 pounds of mercury into the environment” (p. 666). With all the emissions from this one plant come deadly toxins in our air we breath and in the fish we eat. She is heart broken that this plant is just careless in the amount of toxins being released into the environment. She is hurt that her daughter cannot enjoy a food she loves because of others’ carelessness about the environment. These chemical plants in the Houston area are the root of this mercury problem. It begins with them and ends with us. 

    How can we change our habits in order to save our hurting ecosystem? Changing our way of life will be difficult to say the least. Once habits are formed they do not break easily. By choosing renewable energy we can make baby steps toward healing our area and our fish. Many people would say simply switching their energy would not make a significant difference, but they are wrong.We must all do our part to heal these toxic waters. Steingraber says, “I said that I was was working hard to stop the mercury contamination of seafood so that she could someday enjoy tuna without needing to worry. I said that keeping mercury out of tuna required generating electricity in some way other than burning coal, which is why her father and I support solar energy and wind power” (p. 665). Green energy is a simply way to stop pollution. Green energy takes almost no effort on our part to clean up the waters and begin the healing process of our tuna fish. There is no reason as to why we shouldn’t change to green energy. Green energy is good for the environment, therefore its good for the fish, in turn being good for us. Another was to help the environment would be to buy organic foods from local farmers. By purchasing organic you are keeping pesticides not only out of your body buy out of rivers and streams that run off would harm. Steingraber mentions her choice of organics over pesticide rich food saying, “I life to give my food dollars to farmers who sustain the soil, are kind to their animals, and don't use chemicals that poison birds, fish and toads” (p.664). By purchasing organics we help farmers do whats right by their land and animals. Organic food is more than just good for you, its good for the environment as well. I would love to see the day when we could freely eat tuna and not worry about methyl mercury contamination.

    We should all be concerned with out waters pollution, our environment and what we put into our bodies. We know tuna is toxic, when it should not be. We know that burning coal is causing its toxicity. Yet we regretfully do nothing. We need to change our decrepit ways and start setting good examples for generations to come. Switching to green energy is an easy and effective way to help dramatically reduce the toxins in our area. Would you want to knowingly eat, or even feed your child, poisonous tuna knowing the harm it causes others? How do you make a difference?

Works Cited

Linda H. Peterson, and John C. Brereton. Tune Of The Tuna Fish, Ed. Sandra Steingraber.
      NewYork: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. Print


God is the answer!