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Sushi High In Mercury, Study Finds

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By MARIAN BURROS, The New York Times

Published: January 23, 2008

NEW YORK - Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sushi from five of the 20 places had mercury levels so high the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market. The sushi was bought by The New York Times in October.

"No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks," said Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J.

Gochfeld analyzed the sushi for the Times with Joanna Burger, professor of life sciences at Rutgers University. He is a former chairman of the New Jersey Mercury Task Force and also treats patients with mercury poisoning.

Owners of the stores and restaurants expressed surprise and concern.

Although the samples were gathered in New York, experts think similar results would be observed elsewhere.

Most of the restaurants in the survey said the tuna was bluefin.

In 2004 the FDA joined with the EPA to warn women who might become pregnant and children to limit their consumption of certain varieties of canned tuna because the mercury it contained might damage the developing nervous system. Fresh tuna was not included in the advisory. Most of the tuna sushi in the Times' samples contained far more mercury than is typically found in canned tuna.

In recent years, studies have suggested that mercury may also cause health problems for adults, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological symptoms.

In general, tuna sushi from food stores was much lower in mercury. These findings reinforce results in other studies showing that more expensive tuna usually contains more mercury because it is more likely to come from a larger species, which accumulates mercury from the fish it eats. Mercury enters the environment as an industrial pollutant.

In the Times survey, 10 of the 13 restaurants said at least one of the two tuna samples bought was bluefin.

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