On Friday, April 24, 2008, WBZ-TV in Boston followed the lead of radical activists and other scaremongering journalists when it presented a report on sushi and mercury toxicity on the 11:00 p.m. edition of its newscast.
The report, which essentially replicated flawed reporting that had been performed previously by both the New York Times and the Houston Chronicle contained a number of serious omissions that when taken together, exaggerate the risk posed by mercury in fish and harms public health by discouraging Americans from eating seafood that could significantly improve their overall health.
Prior to the report airing, representatives of NFI contacted WBZ-TV and informed them of the following provable scientific facts that they declined to include in their reporting:
1. That there has never been a documented case of mercury toxicity in the U.S. caused by the normal consumption of seafood.
2. The reporting also omitted the fact that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) methylmercury “Action Level” (1.0 part per million) has a ten-fold safety cushion. Specifically, the FDA states publicly that the Action Level “was established to limit consumers’ methyl mercury exposure to levels 10 times lower than the lowest levels associated with adverse effects.” How is it possible that an article purporting to examine potential harm fails to note what the main agency cited on the matter has to say about the risks?
3. The report did mention the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury reference dose. When applied to samples in WBZ-TV's analysis, the reference dose figures an individual would need to consume 26 pieces of tuna sushi per week over the course of an entire lifetime before accumulating the lowest level associated with adverse health effects.
However, WBZ-TV failed to give the proper context to the data, merely stating that to reach that level, an individual would have to consume sushi tuna over an extended period of time, rather than an actual lifetime, to accumulate enough of a dose to begin to approach any level of concern. According to NFI estimates, consuming that much tuna per week would add at least $100 to a family's typical weekly grocery bill.
In addition, though WBZ-TV did include links to many of NFI's supplementary materials pertaining to the industry's ongoing fight to correct misreporting about sushi tuna and mercury, none of those links, most importantly thorough debunkings performed by both Slate.com and Time Magazine, were mentioned in their reporting.
Finally, while WBZ-TV should be applauded for including an interview with a representative of the East Coast Tuna Association, the inclusion of that spokesman was the media equivalent of producing a fig leaf and calling it balanced. Overall, WBZ-TV's reporting simply replicated previously flawed reporting, and when considered together with those other efforts or in isolation, simply fuels unwarranted fears about tuna sushi and mercury and obscures the proven health benefits of seafood as part of a healthy diet.
