A new study published last week in the journal Nature Geoscience is claiming mercury produced by the coal-burning power plants in northern Pacific countries could go thousands of miles through the air before reaching ocean waters neat Hawaii.
Mercury produced in power plants in China and India could travel thousands of miles through the air before "rain deposits it" in the ocean near Hawaii according to the study.
After that, people will have to worry about eating contaminated fish from the Pacific Ocean, like swordfish and tuna according to the report.
Click here to ready the study.
"The implications are that if we're going to effectively reduce the mercury concentrations in open-ocean fish, we're going to have to reduce global emissions of mercury, including emissions from places like China and India," said lead author Joel Blum, an environmental scientist at UM, in the study. "Cleaning up our own shorelines is not going to be enough. This is a global atmospheric problem."
The toxic version of mercury found in the tissues of the potentially harmed fish is called methylmercury according to CBS News. Once consumed, methylmercury could damage the central nervous system, heart, and immune system.
Researchers tried to build on earlier conclusions that indicated that fish that eat at "deeper depths" are most likely to have higher levels of mercury contamination, according to CBS News.
The study showed that the experts tested samples of nine different species that in live in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, located near Hawaii.
"We found that predatory fish that feed at deeper depths in the open ocean, like opah and swordfish, have higher mercury concentrations than those that feed in waters near the surface, like mahi-mahi and yellow fin tuna," said Brian Popp, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa."We knew this was true, but we didn't know why."
Approximately 80 percent of methylmercury is produced at around 165 to 2,000 feet according to the study.
In another recent study, researchers predicted that mercury levels at approximately 660 to 3,300 feet could double by 2050.
Pregnant women are told to avoid eating fish because mercury could be harmful to fetuses.
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