Eating a single freshwater fish caught in a US river or lake may well be the same as consuming water contaminated with particularly persistent and potentially harmful chemicals for a month, according to a new study. They found an average of 9.5 micrograms of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated chemicals (PFAS) per kilogram of wild fish, the scientists wrote in the journal “Environmental Research” on Tuesday.
PFAS are found in many products such as shampoos or makeup, in coatings and packaging and they break down very slowly. They are therefore also called “eternal chemicals”. PFAS have also been spreading in the environment for years and are detected in measurements in water and air. Thousands of chemicals belong to the PFAS group.
serious health problems
Chemicals were developed in the 1940s to be resistant to water and heat. As they hardly decompose, they accumulate over time in the air, soil, water in lakes and rivers, food and the body. They will be linked to a number of serious health issues, including liver damage, high cholesterol, lowered immune responses and various types of cancer.
For the study, between 2013 and 2015, researchers analyzed about 500 samples of fish they caught in lakes and rivers. They found that these contained 278 times more PFAS than commercially grown fish. Consuming a single wild fish is equivalent to consuming a month of water with PFAS levels 2,400 times higher than the limit recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Contaminated
“I can no longer look at a fish without immediately thinking about its exposure to PFAS,” said David Andrews of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which led the study. The results are “concerning due to the impact on poor communities that consume fish as a source of protein or for sociocultural reasons”. The findings infuriated him because the companies that manufactured or used PFAS “have contaminated the globe without taking responsibility for it”.
Pollution expert Patrick Byrne of John Moores University in Liverpool, UK, has called PFAS “probably the biggest chemical threat facing humanity in the 21st century”. The study provides the “first evidence of widespread transmission of PFAS directly from fish to humans,” said Byrne, who was not involved in the study.