Why Is the FDA Saying It’s OK to Eat Seafood 10,000 Times Over the Safe Limit for Dangerous Carcinogens?

FDA not only downplayed the risk of contamination, but ignored staff members who proposed higher levels of contamination protection.     LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest Food headlines via email.

        Ever since the largest offshore oil spill in history spewed into the Gulf of Mexico last year, independent public health experts have questioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to effectively protect Americans from consuming contaminated seafood.

Now a recent study by two of the most tenacious non-government scientists reveals that FDA Gulf seafood “safe levels” allowed 100 to 10,000 times more carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in seafood than what is safe. The overarching issue the report addresses is the failure of the FDA’s risk assessment to protect those most vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals, such as young children, pregnant women and high-consumption seafood eaters.

In an effort to pinpoint how the FDA decided to set its acceptable levels for PAH contaminants in Gulf seafood, researchers at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which performed the study — published in the leading peer-reviewed environmental health journal Environmental Health Perspectives — also scoured documents wrested from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act.