Willamette fish tested for mercury content

Wires dangle from the bow of the boat like octopus tentacles, sending electrical current into the water and stunning the fish, which rise ghostlike on their sides, gills slowly moving in calm final breathing.

This is not a B movie. It's the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality collecting Willamette River fish and testing them for mercury content.

The DEQ has spent the summer testing fish tissues for mercury levels as part of a broader effort to set maximum pollution levels for individual waterways and devise a clean-up. Results from the agency's Willamette Basin Mercury Study will be released in December and used to decide how safe the fish are to eat, to determine safe consumption levels and to assess the river's overall health.

So far, largemouth bass and northern pike minnow show the highest concentrations of mercury, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. Salmon and steelhead show low levels because they aren't full-time residents of the river.

The Willamette Basin's main river and its many tributaries are on the state's list of impaired water bodies, which means they have health problems. There are 10 areas in which mercury concentrations are high enough for officials to issue advisories limiting consumption. Those areas extend from the Cottage Grove and Dorena reservoirs to the mouth of the Willamette at the Columbia River.

This summer's mercury testing program includes seven spots, from the lower Willamette near the St. Johns Bridge in North Portland to the upper Willamette at Greenway Footbridge in Eugene.

Mercury, known to cause neurological problems and a high risk in children, the elderly and pregnant women, is tricky. Like a chameleon, it changes form, traveling through air as a vapor and through water as a liquid, and accumulates in sediments, fish and humans.

Mercury comes from all sorts of places. It occurs naturally in the Northwest's volcanic soil and substrates, and it's a legacy of fluorescent lights and automobile ignitions. Federal environment managers worry about the coal-fired plumes, laced with mercury, drifting from Asia and sullying soils and water with their fallout.

"The problem with mercury is it's kind of widespread on a lot of low levels and it's hard to figure out where it's coming from," said Eric Blischke, toxics coordinator for the Oregon DEQ. "There's no smoking gun out there. There's no one big industry that's discharging all this mercury into the Willamette that we can go after."

But fish pick up mercury, sometimes in concentrated quantities, the end of a process of bioaccumulation.

In recent weeks, DEQ's natural resource specialists have collected about 20 fish from each site.

They dock their boat along the riverbank, away from other fishermen. Dressed in white Tyvek suits to maintain cleanliness, they beat the catch over the head with a small bat, killing it. On a sanitized work station, scales are taken to determine the age of the fish, the stomach is cut open to see what the fish have been eating, and fillets are bagged and shipped to a lab for mercury testing. Generally, the larger and older the fish, the higher the mercury concentrations.

The DEQ found unhealthy mercury levels in Willamette fish the last time it tested more than five years ago. In 2000, The Oregonian and scientists at Oregon State University tested Willamette fish for a number of contaminants during a five-month study and found mercury.

In water, mercury starts its chameleon game by converting to the more toxic methylmercury, far worse to humans than the familiar silver liquid. Methylmercury is readily absorbed into insects, fish and humans who eat fish. High concentrations of methylmercury lead to nervous system deterioration, impaired hearing and speech, involuntary muscle movements and kidney damage.

"Your body does not need mercury," said Dave Stone, public health toxicologist for the state Department of Human Services. "It's just another negative component your body can do without."

Stone said his message is not to stop eating fish. Instead, his office focuses on educating groups who eat fish from the Willamette on the health department's suggested portion restrictions.

Amanda Guay, a public health educator working with Stone, is overseeing a grant program that will divide $10,000 for programs on fish preparation and selection, focusing on tribes, immigrants and other minority communities known to fish the Willamette for food.

Eating fish from the Willamette for most of these target groups "isn't a choice. This is something they need to do" to survive, Guay said.

"We always give advice on how to properly prepare something to get rid of PCBs and other organics, but mercury binds to the muscle," said Stone. "So, if you eat the fillet, you eat the mercury."

The DEQ will present its mercury reduction strategy to the Environmental Quality Commission in December.

For a full account of mercury's travel through the environment and living creatures, see http://www.usgs.gov/themes/factsheet/146-00/

(A related article)

Study raises concerns about mercury poisoning

By DENNIS BUECKERT

OTTAWA (CP) - Thirty years after a Japanese researcher identified Canada's biggest case of mercury poisoning, he has returned to discover that the problem is far from resolved and may be getting worse.

The study by Japanese researcher Masazumi Harada raises troubling new questions about the sources and effects of mercury contamination present in water and fish in many parts of the country.

Harada's new research is particularly sobering news for aboriginal people who depend on a diet rich in fresh fish.

It had been expected the health of First Nations people on the Grassy Narrows and White Dog reserves near Kenora, Ont. would improve after a mill stopped dumping mercury in the English and Wabagoon river systems in 1970.

But when Harada returned to the area last fall, he found evidence of continuing, pervasive health problems consistent with Minamata disease, a neurological disorder caused by mercury.

The results of Harada's study have not been published but they were summarized by Steve Fobister Sr., deputy chief of the Grassy Narrows, who has seen them.

Of approximately 60 First Nations people who were examined at Grassy Narrows and Whitedog last fall, 70 per cent showed symptoms of neurological disorder, said Fobister.

Symptoms included blurred vision, slurred speech, twitching, numbness, shaking and poor muscle co-ordination. The symptoms of eight people who were part of the original study in the 1970s had become more severe.

Fobister says that he himself has serious neurological disease. "I can hardly tie my shoes any more," he said in an interview.

Even children in the community are showing serious

problems, including seizures, he said.

Fobister blames clearcut logging in the area for continuing high levels of mercury contamination - a theory for which there is some scientific support although debate continues.

A University of Montreal researcher reported in 2001 that mercury levels were up to 100 per cent higher in heavily logged watersheds than in lakes where there was no logging nearby.

The theory is that airborne mercury from sources such as coal-fired power plants and incinerators tends to be held in the soil and foliage of an intact forest, but runs into waterways in areas that have been clearcut.

Health Canada is funding a new study of neurological disease in the Grassy Narrows area in the light of the recent research developments.

"It is alarming to see there are so many people still suffering neurological symptoms in this community after 30 years," said Laurie Chan of McGill University, who is leading the study.

The research is complex because symptoms of mercury poisoning resemble those of other diseases from Alzheimer's to alcoholism, and the people are exposed to toxins other than mercury, such as dioxins and furans.

When Harada first reported Minamata disease in the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog reserves, his discovery attracted international scientific attention and initial denials from government officials.

In 1985, however, two Ojibway bands accepted $16.6 million in compensation from the federal and Ontario governments and two paper companies which successively owned the pulp mill at Dryden.

Many First Nations communities across Canada have concerns about mercury. Symptoms of poisoning have been found among the Cree of Northern Quebec, but at a much milder level than at Grassy Narrows.

The Tl'azt'en Nation in British Columbia has announced a lawsuit against the federal government and Cominco over alleged poisoning from a mercury mine.

The Union of New Brunswick Indians has launched a study of mercury levels in six river systems.

Health Canada ended systematic problem of mercury in the area in 1999 because the problem seemed to be under control, said Health Canada expert Paul Strohack.

"The research was telling us mercury levels had been dropping and interest in the community appeared to be waning," said Strohack, adding that Harada's work has re-ignited interest.

For years Health Canada has issued directives to limit consumption of fresh fish but it is not certain these directives are followed by First Nations people.

"Telling someone not to eat fish is like telling him not to be an Indian," said Fobister.

The Grassy Narrows band has maintained a blockade on a logging road near its reserve since December, demanding a bigger say over logging operations and talks on the mercury issue.

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