Eating seafood high in mercury is hazardous to your health, especially for women and children. The "Got Mercury?" calculator below helps you make healthier seafood choices. Just enter your weight, the seafood type, the amount of seafood you will eat during a week, and click the calculator button. These calculations are based on EPA and FDA data (updated January 2006).
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Cell phone version www.gotmercury.mobi Eating more than one type of fish per week? Use the ADVANCED CALCULATOR.
How many ounces of seafood is a typical portion? You can use the following estimates: A typical serving of fish (steak or fillet) is about 6 to 8 ounces. A sushi order is 2 to 4 ounces per type. A standard can of tuna contains 6 ounces.
How can I enter grams & kilograms? 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds. 1 gram = 0.0353 ounces.
GotMercury.org in Spanish - Calculadora de mercurio en mariscos en Español: ww?w.gotmercury.org/espanol
Mercury contamination of seafood is a widespread public health problem. The Food and Drug Administration warns that pregnant women, nursing mothers, women who might become pregnant, and children should not eat swordfish, shark, tilefish, and king mackerel because of their high methylmercury content. The FDA also warns women and children to limit their consumption of tuna.
Got questions? Please call David McGuire, 415-663-8590, ext. 106. GotMercury is a project of Turtle Island Restoration Network, the parent organization of Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
* Mercury concentration values used for this calculator come from the United States Food and Drug Administration website (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html). Two exceptions are the troll-caught albacore data which comes from an Oregon State University study and canned albacore data, which comes from an FDA dataset that is not yet published on their site. Please be aware that these values are averages. The concentration of mercury in seafood can be significantly higher or lower than what is represented here. As a precautionary approach, we recommend that women, (especially of childbearing age) avoid seafood species that contain higher average levels of mercury. Mercury information for many shellfish species is currently unavailable.
design: Steven Lyons photo: Robert Cardin
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