Watch Out for Mercury

This is one classic case wherein ignorance can be deadly. Had I been a convert to shark-eating after that vacation morning, I could have been dead today for mercury poisoning.

EATING shark meat is not in my list of preferred dishes. But when you go with youth of your age who have no qualms about that, it is a matter of time you’ll get to taste it at least for the first time.

I had my first meal on shark meat decades ago together with friends I grew up with in my hometown. Those were the times when we hit the basketball court early in the morning, and then proceed to the seashore to buy fish for our breakfast, which we usually cook at home.

In one of those vacation mornings, we found no excitement in the catches that the fishermen brought in. Then one of us suggested a kilo or two of medium-sized shark. I grimaced in anticipation. But a dish of hinalang (simmered chunks of shark meat cooked in lots of the usual spices and 10 to 20 pieces of red chili) convinced me it was not that bad after all.

But the health concern turned out to be real when I came upon a study of Dariush Mozaffarian and Eric Rimm of the Harvard School of Public Health (Boston, Massachusetts), and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2006).

They noted three types of mercury found in food: inorganic mercury, elemental mercury, and methylmercury. Inorganic mercury is poorly absorbed after ingestion. Elemental mercury only slightly crosses tissue barriers if at all. Methylmercury however readily absorbs and actively transported into tissues. And this mercury makes eating shark very risk for mercury poisoning.

Methylmercury accumulates naturally... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 09 May 2012.

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