Is Our Seafood Safe?

Minimal impact from well blowout
March 16, 2011
Yvonne Hale
March 18, 2011
Minimal impact from well blowout
March 16, 2011
Yvonne Hale
March 18, 2011

It has been said countless times over the past 11 months that the vitality of seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is under more scrutiny than any other seafood in the world. An unchallenged mind would then believe it must be the safest in the world.


But environmental scientists have put the federal testing agencies’ procedures under a similar microscope, and the slide’s contents are far from objective, leaving interest groups and scientists at a conflict about whether the methods in practice can definitively determine if the Gulf seafood is safe for consumption.

After the Deepwater Horizon rig under lease by BP became engulfed in flames and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration installed a myriad of sensory and chemical tests they describe as unprecedented and successful in proving the Gulf’s seafood is not tainted by the estimated 150 million gallons of crude that gushed from the site or dispersants used to treat it.


The federal entities test for several – but not all – Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons that correspond with the oil from the Macondo Prospect, MC252.


Last October, they began testing for Dioctyl Sulfosuccinate Sodium Salt, an ingredient in Corexit 9500 that can cause diarrhea, intestinal bloating and eye, lung and skin irritation.

A few weeks after the oil spill, more than 37 percent of the Gulf’s federal fishing areas were closed as a precaution. Before they could be reopened, seafood samples had to pass sensory and chemical tests.


The federal agencies set levels of concern for 12 chemicals linked to the MC252 oil that when exceeded would trigger fishing area closures. The threshold has yet to be reached, but much of the public remains skeptical about whether or not the seafood is safe.


NOAA, the FDA, state agencies, coastal politicians and businessmen intertwined with the vitality of the Gulf’s seafood market have declared the food source is safe for the public’s consumption since last summer when NOAA began reopening the areas.

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said during a Sept. 15 press conference that tests have proven the “seafood is free of contamination,” an overzealous attempt to ease the minds of the seafood paranoid that glossed over even the elementary aspects of the testing process. Lubchenco later retracted the statement.


Environmental scientist and chemist Wilma Subra has tested water and seafood samples taken from the Gulf coast since the oil spill, and she has reported that her samples are consistent with the federal agencies’ – low levels of PAHs are existent in the seafood.


The debate isn’t over the existence of PAHs, but whether or not the levels are harmful. One side says the levels are not harmful and the other remains skeptical. How much is too much?

Per the federal seafood testing policies in place for fishing areas that were closed in the aftermath of the oil spill, it is more than safe enough for a 176-pound person to eat four jumbo shrimp each week.


A fifth shrimp each week wouldn’t carry a crippling health condition, nor would a sixth, seventh or eighth, but the soft amount skews the formula and puts outlier consumers – based on a national consumption scale – at a risk to a degree that can’t be unanimously pinpointed.


The policy’s critics also say the weight figure used is oversimplified and when it’s combined with the consumption rate used in the formula, it derives an allowable contaminant threshold that discounts coastal residents who eat considerably more than 16 jumbo shrimp per month and ignores a key variable – children.

The Natural Resources Defense Council released last December the results of a survey it conducted along the Gulf Coast in an effort to see if figures the FDA uses as its “high level” consumption rate are an accurate representation of coastal residents.


The 90th percentile consumption rates, as determined by the 547-person survey, was six shrimp meals per week, eight fish meals per week, five oyster meals per week and four crab meals per week.


In the FDA and NOAA testing formula, the consumption rates are twice a week for fish and once a week for shrimp, oyster and crab. The FDA used the 2005-06 National Health and Nutrition Examination Study 90th percentile to measure high-level seafood consumption.

Subra, the environmental scientist commissioned by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and the Lower Mississippi River Keeper, said her seafood test results have meshed with those reported by the federal agencies but disagreed that the results prove seafood is safe.


“They based it on consumption that’s equal to the general consumption in the U.S.,” Subra said. “For instance, shrimp consumption, one meal per week that will include only four shrimp. As you know, people in this area eat a lot more shrimp than that and eat it a lot more frequently than once a week.


“I think if they had recalculated these standards, I think some of the samples that we have been finding would exceed those standards.”

LuAnne White, DHH consultant and toxicology professor at Tulane University, said that even with lower allowable contaminant thresholds, the levels of PAHs that are being found wouldn’t trigger closures.


“The health department, looking at what they found, said, ‘OK, if we turn this around and we say how much seafood would you have to eat if it were at the range we’re detecting,’ and that comes out to where an individual would have to consume like 63 pounds of shrimp or crab, 5 pounds of oysters or 9 pounds of fish every day before you exceeded that limit,” White said. “If those levels they were finding were very close to that cutoff range, you might worry, but the fact is they are 10- and 100-fold lower than that cutoff range.”


Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana health officer and DHH headman, said his staff reviewed the established thresholds and adjusted the consumption rate to more accurately reflect coastal residents.

“I’m comfortable [saying] that the levels that were set before weren’t addressing our needs here, but I’m comfortable now that we’ve reviewed it and made those adjustments that we are still below those level of concerns,” Guidry said.


Considering the different factors involved, comparisons between the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and other spills testing procedures in which fishing areas were closed become muddled. But the Deepwater Horizon levels of concern are set much higher than previous oil spills.


Different factors, such as exposure duration and body weight, were used in determining the cancer risk threshold of various PAHs; the threshold is based on a compound’s equivalency to benzo(a)pyrene (BaPE). The BaPE is used as the basis for determining levels of concern for carcinogenic hydrocarbons, and it is multiplied by each individual compound’s toxicity equivalency factor to determine individual compound levels of concern.

The baseline BaPE for finfish following the Exxon-Valdez spill in 1989 was 5 parts per billion, or 0.0005 parts per million. NOAA and the FDA set a baseline BaPE at 0.035 ppm for the Deepwater Horizon spill, an amount 70-times higher.


After the 1997 Kure spill off the coast of California, the baseline BaPE for shellfish was set at 34 ppb, or 0.0034 ppm, when using a consumption rate of 7.5 grams per day. The Deepwater Horizon spill, with a consumption rate of 12 grams per day, set the BaPE baseline at 0.143 ppm.


Aside from inconsistent consumption rates, other figures in the levels of concern formula differ from each spill.

The formula used in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez spill more than 21 years ago set the body weight at 132 pounds and cancer slope factor at 1.75 mg/kg/day, and it also calculated the formula for separate exposure durations, one for 10 years and the other for 70 years.


Testing after the Kure spill in 1997 set body weight at 154 pounds and cancer slope factor at 9.5 mg/kg/day and set exposure duration at 2 years.


The Deepwater Horizon testing set the body weight at 176 pounds, the cancer slope factor at 7.3 mg/kg/day and set exposure duration at 5 years.

Figures from previous spills are according to data reported in “Improving Seafood Safety Management After an Oil Spill,” authored by Ruth A. Yender of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration in 2003.


One Louisiana lawmaker said he had deferred to the federal experts to determine how much contamination is too much but added that the consumption rate used to determine the levels underestimates coastal residents.


“I’m looking to the experts to try to understand a consensus of what reasonable levels are, and obviously, when you set that level it can’t be for eating the seafood once,” La. Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, told the Tri-Parish Times. “People here eat seafood every week, so it has to be cumulative and that’s part of the debate. So I’m just looking at what the best science is on that.”

“They also didn’t establish a criteria for the oil range organics,” Subra said. “So you have the oil that BP spilled and a portion of it is the PAH, but a larger portion is what you would pick up if you ran oil range organics.”

Subra said she has found more than 1 percent of oil range organics, or Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, in the oysters she has sampled and tested.

“They are a combination of a whole host of different chemicals, and they are consisting of chemicals that are known and suspected to cause cancer,” Subra said.

Alabama analytical chemist Bob Naman tested for TPHs in three species of shrimp sampled in February. TPH tests look for any and all compounds from an oil source and is not necessarily an indicator of toxicity.

Naman collected samples of brown and white shrimp early last month and found TPH levels in both samples – 319 ppm in the brown shrimp and 194 ppm in the white shrimp. Each sample was between 21 and 25 shrimp.

Naman’s ACT Laboratory also tested a sample of royal red shrimp that was collected Feb. 27 and given to him by a client. The results found 4,054 ppm of TPH in the sample.

Naman said that when testing, any levels of TPH higher than 200 ppm concern him.

White, the DHH consultant, said the TPHs and oil range compounds that are being found in seafood do not give an indication as to the seafood’s toxicity.

“The TPHs or the oil range organics, there are thousands of compounds that fall within that,” White said. “Some of them are nontoxic, others could be highly [toxic], but it doesn’t tell you how much of whatever is in there.”

White said TPH and oil range compound monitoring is useful from an environmental standpoint in determining how much of the compounds remain, “but it doesn’t tell you a lot in relation to health.”

In an editorial made available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers and published on March 5, Guidry, DHH’s head man, and a representative from the FDA and NOAA argued that “the system set up to keep tainted seafood out of circulation worked.”

“The results of the tests, all publicly available, should help Americans buy Gulf seafood with confidence: the seafood has consistently tested 100 to 1,000 times lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the residues of oil contamination,” the editorial reads.

The essay does not specifically discuss the thresholds themselves or testing for oil range compounds, but instead points to the area reopening test results for the 12 designated PAHs and dispersant tests.

“It’s easy to shut down fishing,” White said. “In fact, they shut down fishing – shrimping, crabbing and oysters, all of the gathering of seafood – it’s easy to shut it down. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t shut down because of any of these calculations or ranges. Everything was shut down, so they had to reopen it. The approach is looking to say, ‘OK, which areas are clean enough for us to reopen.'”

The public’s hesitance to return to its role in the seafood industry’s harvest-sell-consume business chain has been met with a full-scale public relations campaign, launched by seafood coalitions and local politicians and funded by the corporation who harmed an industry that has an estimated $2.3 billion impact on south Louisiana.

Gov. Bobby Jindal announced last November an agreement with BP that would secure $48 million for testing and marketing Gulf seafood. Over a span of three years, $18 million is dedicated to continued testing of the seafood and $30 million to marketing it. The funds would reset any time a fishing area is closed.

The Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board received the $30 million from BP. Ewell Smith, its executive director, said the board has started a national search and plans to hire a “high-powered agency” within six months to help promote the message that the seafood is safe.

Louisiana Seafood made a trip to Washington D.C. three weeks ago to meet with Congressmen and intends on hosting a safety panel on April 20th with the FDA, NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency. In promoting its message, Louisiana Seafood has staffed trade shows and, on a smaller-scale, offered its voice in the comments section of several news stories concerning seafood safety.

In a calculated and concerted effort that resembles a serial apologist, a man who signs his name as Matthew Berman represents Louisiana Seafood by commenting on stories that discuss the safety of the Gulf’s seafood. When the media was covering the NRDC’s survery, Berman posted several comments on various stories as he tried to correct what he called misperception and inform people that Gulf seafood is safe.

“We turn to the experts,” said Smith, who added that he eats seafood three to four times each week. “We have to continue turning to the experts. We understand that every once in a while somebody’s going to try to pull up a negative perception and we’ll address it head-on.

“Priority No. 1 for us has been the safety for the consumers since day one. We never wanted to see a product go out onto the market that was bad. When NOAA and the FDA started closing down our waters, we encouraged that as precautionary closures. We continue to turn to them, and their science is solid, as long as their science keeps coming back and saying everything is fine, we’re good.”

It’s true that the testing has exonerated the Gulf seafood, but it’s the measures used to test that some find troubling.

“The information that we’re finding is cause for concern,” Marylee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network said. “The levels of petroleum hydrocarbon that we’re finding in the seafood, I’m very concerned. I certainly don’t think there’s been enough testing in my opinion to say everything is OK.

“I think it’s a personal choice. I’ve had fishermen who have been our office say, ‘I’m really afraid about what I’m feeding my family and I’m afraid about what I’m putting on the market,’ and I think there is some of us who have made to decision not to eat the seafood at this time.”

Even some who are fixtures in the seafood industry have expressed reservation about the test results. A Grand Isle seafood supplier who had his hand in 11 percent of the U.S. seafood market – and subsequently had his hand mangled throughout the months following the oil spill – said the public should be seafood skeptical.

“Yeah, I’ve seen shrimp look different than I’ve ever seen before in my 52 years,” said Dean Blanchard, owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood. “I’ve seen black spots in the heads while they’re still alive. It looked like oil going through the gills.

“They’re not testing the part where the oil is at (the heads). That’s exactly what they’re (not) doing. I’ve sent them some samples, some I’ve never seen before. They sent me something back saying it’s black gill disease.”

Blanchard said he had neither heard of the disease nor seen it before, but a quick Internet search informed him it’s most frequently found in shrimp ponds with high chemical contamination. “Apparently, they sprayed enough stuff in the Gulf of Mexico to make it similar to a shrimp pond.”

The seafood supplier said the oil spill has essentially put him out of business – permanently. He tells nearly every reporter he talks to that the past five Nobel Prize winners working in conjunction with a sole objective of putting Dean Blanchard out of business couldn’t have done a better job than BP after the oil spill.

Blanchard, who sounded distraught when discussing the future of the only industry he has ever known, said he doesn’t expect the seafood population to return to pre-spill levels any time in the future, referencing the dead dolphins that have washed ashore along the Gulf Coast as a testament to the ordeal’s impact on marine life.

“You’ve got dolphins being born stillborn out there, but it’s not BP,” Blanchard said.

“All of a sudden God decided to make some stillborn dolphins. We’ve got pelicans with blood coming out of their rear-ends. We’ve got problems here, man – big problems. We’ve got dead zones out there. I’ve talked to boats that throw the net places they’ve always caught shrimp, fish, they pick up the net there’s nothing in it. Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just dead. Dead.”

Next week …

People across the Gulf Coast who claim to be sick from illnesses related to the oil spill can’t find solutions in traditional medicine. Find out what measures they are taking and whether or not it is working in next week’s story.

Mike Blanchard is among hundreds of shrimpers worried about the lasting perceptions consumers have about seafood in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. U.S. COAST GUARD