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Don't eat fish you catch at Jamaica Pond, unless your goal is to become a human thermometer
By adamg on Mon, 07/20/2015 - 8:02am
The New England Center for Investigative Reporting reports on stubbornly high mercury levels in fish across the ponds and lakes of New ENgland, including Jamaica Pond:
On Boston’s Jamaica Pond one recent sunny afternoon, Shu Bao Chen of Boston tied bait to a hook as one of his two young girls dangled a fishing pole over the still water. He said he was unaware of the state’s blanket advisory that no children under 12 and no women of childbearing years should eat any fish from freshwater bodies in Massachusetts.
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Comments
Rise of Mercury Levels
The timing of the latest rises in monitored mercury levels, despite the better handling of powerplant emissions is odd. I wonder if it has anything to do with the rise of the CFL and improper disposal. It's very hard to dispose of them properly since there is no regular pick up method for such, and I suspect many people just dumpster them with the regular trash. Then the mercury leaches into the groundwater and the water cycle.
and other electronics
Definitely people are tossing their CFLs into regular trash. They are probably also throwing out their old cell phones and other electronics, all of which contain mercury.
However, this probably isn't news to the mercury experts, who still seem mystified by the rising levels.
You can easily dispose of
You can easily dispose of them at many of the places where you buy cfls, like best buy, you local hardware store or Home Depot. But anyway, there aren't any landfills near Jamaica Pond so it's unlikely to be the cause, a lot of our trash goes to out of state landfills.
Not sure this is true about Jamaica Pond
Lots of the fish are put in "fresh" each season, after having been raised in state hatcheries. I think the problem relates almost entirely to wild fish populations.
Midwest power plants
Well, the fish are largely raised in the Pioneer Valley so subject to the same power plant pollution (I think?) from the midwest as the rest of the state. It's not like they're getting trucked down from Newfoundland or something.
So, agreed it's not local light bulbs, but it is likely a regional issue.
Read the article. Stocked
Read the article. Stocked trout are excluded....
Are there other stocked fish....
... (besides trout) put into Jamaica Pond? (I think I heard that trout are generally okay, even if wild)
Yes, some salmon too. All of
Yes, some salmon too. All of the other species like bass, carp, catfish, etc. should not be eaten and are not stocked, at least not regularly.
Well thank goodness
Well thank goodness republicans, including Baker, want to keep relaxing environmental regulations since they are bad for business. What's a little mercury poisoning when you know it's helping a businessman earn another million.
I hope you like slowly
I hope you like slowly freezing to death in the dark since without coal power plants there wouldn't be enough electricity for the economy to function in the winter time. The EPA regulations were held up because the effects on domestic power generation would have been catastrophic. US power plants already have very strict standards and have been in a marathon to get cleaner even without the recently proposed stricter regs.
The real issue is pollution from Chinese power plants following the jet stream. For every coal power plant the US modernizes or replaces with a clean one China build 10 filthy ones!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/07/china-coal-idUSL3N0K90H720140107
Yes, it's the fault of the Chinese!
as opposed to politicians who clamor for the old traditional American values like a wife in the kitchen and the kids at the ole fishing hole while simultaneously voting for and supporting the old fashioned poisoners of those same fishing holes.
Can't it be both?
Wait, I'll answer my own question - Yes, yes it can.
Not that simple
You might want to consult some actual scientific literature before you spout your anonsense?
The EPA regulations were not going to be any more "catastrophic" than the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments were, and those are widely hailed as saving industry money by compelling modernization to more efficient units AND controlling emissions of acidifying gases. The EPA consults with scientists and energy experts when it makes the impact calculations required by law. Industry just makes shit up and then goes chicken little. Industry generally overestimates impacts by a factor of four, historically.
As for coal pollutants, that affects Japan vastly more than it affects us, due to distance involved (although such pollutants are showing up in California).
Also, much of China and India burn biomass for cooking, and it is now considered to be possible in environmental and climate change science circles that burning that coal to generate electricity to increase the pace of rural electrification and replace cooking and heating with wood, charcoal, or coal briquettes with electric devices would be a net win for climate (and save millions of lives each year among women and children exposed to household combustion smoke).
Nothing is ever simple and sometimes the optimal trade offs are outright perverse.
http://thehill.com/policy
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/248385-industry-rails-again...
Your faith in government agencies which can't seem to do a damn thing right anymore is misguided. All too often THEY AREN'T talking to scientists and industry experts before drafting regulations which are not realistically achievable.
The massive hike in electricity rates regionally from power plants being shut down without proper capacity replacements should have been a wake up call that the A team is not running the show and hasn't been for a very long time.
Scientific citations, please
Regurgitated industry propaganda is not fact.
Shouldn't there be a sign?
Jamaica Pond has a bunch of infographic signs about the pond near the boathouse, wouldn't you think "hey don't eat any freshwater fish in the entire state!" Merits a mention?
It's been buried or omitted
It's been buried or omitted from most of these stories, but stocked fish are usually ok to eat. Most trout you'll find in eastern Mass lakes & ponds are stocked (farm raised), and not all that different from the ones you see at the supermarket.
Not to minimize concern, but...
Not to minimize concern, but Jamaica Pond is not in the state's freshwater fish advisory database, contrary to what is implied several times by the article's authors.
The article also misstates MA DPH advice regarding freshwater fish. Although it has published a long list of fish/seafood to avoid - including freshwater fish of natural provenance - the guidelines from the MA Bureau of Environmental Health explicitly state that "fish that are stocked in streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds in
Massachusetts are safe for everyone to eat, including children and pregnant women" (emphasis added). Here's a link to their guide pamphlet, available in nine languages (collect the set!)
I admit that I would like to see more thorough and consistent testing of known environmental toxins, not just in MA but in the whole country (the whole planet, actually). But I feel that the article was more than a bit breathless, a bit lacking in detailed fact-checking, and the repeated mention of the body of water closest to the one of the state's best known 'progressive' neighborhoods felt more than a little manipulative.
(Of course, adam's headline was even more over-the-top, but I think regular readers of UHub understand that tongue-in-cheek hyperbole is part of his style and adjust our expectations accordingly.)
Two things..
1. The fact JP was used as a focal point as a so called "progressive neighborhood" has nothing to do with the issue of poisoned water.
2. You and your family eat a lot of those so called "safe"fish?
Stocked trout in
Stocked trout in Massachusetts are intended to be eaten by a human, though a lot (IMO most) are lost to birds.
The vast majority of Massachusetts waters are "put-and-take." The state puts the fish there, and the license holder takes them (and eats them).
way to make it more complex than necessary
The gentleman in the linked article (who insisted on anonymity) was pictured taking an illegal fish, (Bass <12 inches). Then again, regarding other information, they said that it rendered "the regulation mute". Not moot, mute. Yikes.
I am quite certain that 90%
I am quite certain that 90% of the fishing public at Jamaica pond has no idea what regulations are in terms of keepable length of bass or any other species.
Turf not Surf
No need to fish. Just run down hill to Brookline and hunt some turkey(s)!