COCODRIE, La.—Eating at North America's southern rim, where the land fades into the water, demands a stomach for seafood—particularly shrimp, crab and fish, such as sea bass. After all, Louisiana alone pulls in some six million metric tons of seafood per decade, and Terrebonne Parish, which encompasses Cocodrie, is responsible for 20 percent of the state's oyster, crab and shrimp harvest. But the dark line that runs along the underbelly of locally caught fresh shrimp—the aquatic creature's gut—is full these days of the residue from last year's BP oil spill, along with the microscopic plants and animals that make up the shrimp's diet.

The official line, however, is that the seafood is safe for human consumption.

"Our seafood has to be the most tested seafood anywhere," says biologist Martin Bourgeois of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Oil contaminants "have been detected but at levels well below any threat to human health and safety."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agrees, due to a battery of sniffing, tasting (or sensory tests, in agency parlance) and chemical testing since April 30, 2010 to detect the presence of either oil or the dispersants used to break up the slick. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) opened the last of the federal Gulf waters closed to fishing on April 19. Testing at the start of this month reconfirmed via the same tests that oil was no longer present in the fish caught in the area immediately around the Macondo well.

"The seafood coming out of the Gulf is perfectly safe to eat," says retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who was the national incident commander for the worst oil spill in U.S. history. "The American public needs to understand that."

There is no question that most fish at least can process—transforming the contaminant from a compound that is fat-soluble into one that is water-soluble—and excrete the nasty stuff found in oil: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), such as benzene, toluene and more, although studies after previous oil spills suggest that other marine life can accumulate these toxicants and even concentrate them as they pass up the food chain. "Those are long-term persistent and some are considered carcinogenic," says toxicologist Scott Miles of Louisiana State University, "but you find that in your gasoline every day" as well as in the sticky black burned fat left over on barbecue grills.

Such compounds are not found in the fish tissue on which we dine. "You can expose fish [to PAHs in water] for two years and, at the end, the tissue burden is no higher," notes toxicologist Joe Griffitt of the University of Southern Mississippi.

When marine animals are exposed to the oil—whether through breathing oil-laced waters or eating oil-carrying plankton—it can cause serious side effects, however, such as dampening the immune system, which can allow infections or tumors to develop. That list is similar to the impacts on people. For example, the PAH known as benzo(a)pyrene is both highly toxic and breaks down into cancer-causing byproducts.

The guideline for FDA and NOAA testing is an exposure level to benzo(a)pyrene, for example, that will not result in more than one excess cancer per 100,000 people exposed over a lifetime. That is assessed based on an individual who weighs 80 kilograms and eats four jumbo shrimp four times a month. And to determine the contamination level of any seafood, at least 10 trained personnel sniff and taste samples for petroleum "taint" as well as apply a chemical solvent to dissolve and capture any contaminants.

But the FDA only tests the "edible portion" of the shrimp, which, for FDA purposes, is the muscle tissue; it does not test, for example, the gut contents of the shrimp. PAHs and oil are in the gut, says ecologist Paul Sammarco of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, who is involved with such gut testing, and at very high levels, as well as in the fat, which clings to the interior of the exoskeleton near the head, among other places. And, at least in Louisiana, if not elsewhere, people most often eat the shrimp gut and all—and they eat a lot more than four shrimp in a serving. "That's what falls off my po'boy," says Mobile Bay baykeeper Casi Callaway. "I was raised on half-a-pound per person and then add a pound."

In addition, the FDA did not do any testing for groups of people who might be at higher risk, such as pregnant women and children. "Very few labs can do [analysis of seafood] and do it correctly," contends toxicologist Ralph Portier at Louisiana State University.

For its part, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates a more stringent standard for acceptable contamination levels in water than the FDA's limits in seafood. That can lead to conundrums where the EPA declares a water body unsafe for fishing even though the fish in that water body will contain a given toxicant at levels below the maximum allowed by FDA. "The FDA approach allows higher mercury than the EPA approach," notes public health scientist Daniel Harrington, also of Louisiana State. "So don't eat fish from the lake per EPA, but the fish bought in a grocery store per FDA might be more contaminated."

The EPA and NOAA continue to test Gulf Coast waters for the presence of hydrocarbon contaminants and continue to find them, although they are highly diluted. More than 200 million gallons of oil from the Macondo blowout are now dispersed in the roughly 640 quadrillion gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico.

In any case, "everybody down here is eating all the seafood they can get," says Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet. "I'm eating it all the time."

Your faithful correspondent, for one, ate a heaping portion of shrimp gumbo, adequately doused in hot sauce. As Portier says: "The joke is we put Tabasco on seafood to hide the oil."

5 Comments

1. 1. the Gaul 04:29 PM 4/21/11

   What exactly does a retired Coast Guard Admiral know about nutrition?
   "Officially safe?" Nothing evident yet? Thalidomide was safe when it was first used, too. Remember how that worked out?
   I grieve for the Gulf fishermen whose numbers will dwindle when the effects of this disaster reach your table.

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2. 2. Roth5314 07:55 PM 4/21/11

   The Government has been lying to us for so long about so many things that it's hard to believe anything the Government says anymore. Admiral Allen is particularly hard to believe because he was pitching the Government line all during the Gulf disaster. I still don't eat gulf seafood, and I always ask where seafood comes from.

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3. 3. gunslingor in reply to the Gaul 01:42 PM 4/22/11

   Don't forget that all legal limits for contaminents of seafood were raised 10 fold in the 90s. Mercury for example was found to be ten times the legal limit or more in hundreds of species sampled around the world. They tested hundreds of species, thousands of times; its pretty conclusive, mercury is a minimum of ten times the limit it was 10 years ago in every fish you eat. much higher in shellfish. What did the government do in response to this terrible truth? Guess what, they raised the legal limit by ten fold. Plus, there is virtualy no testing.
   "have been detected but at levels well below any threat to human health and safety."
   -What they mean to say is acute effects. They aren't concerned with long term or cumulative effects, which are much harder prove in court. They are saying you can eat it and won't get sick, but they aren't saying you'll live a long and productive life if you eat fish everyday. Before the spill, doctors were obligated to recommend to pregnant women not to eat fish more than once a week (again, only concerned with acute effects here as well).
   -Remember, just 50 years ago, fish was the healthiest food on the planet; now, it's low grade poison. The oil spill only made matters worse... but remember, there are around 10,000 oil spills reported a year (each reportable incident is about a barrel or more).
   -We are destroying our home, this is unquesionable.

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4. 4. lauriewiegler 05:10 PM 4/22/11

   Hi, David. I ate a huge plate of Gulf seafood while I was in Ga. in January. It was only later that I pondered a PR's comment that we really didn't know for sure how safe it was. I think if we learned anything from the aftereffects of the oil spill it was that we need to severely scrutinize the government agencies tasked with protecting us. That said, I'd eat it again. The taste outweighs the risk - at least in small doses.

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5. 5. electric38 04:02 PM 4/28/11

   Will the radioactivity that was added to seawater be able to cancel the effects of the oil pollutants? Just kidding. I doubt any reports that surface will accurately portray what the oil has done to the health of the earth. There's too much money, (purchased) political and media influence at stake. The "energy" monopolies will continue to skew or soften the facts so that everything continues the way it is.
   Of course the fishermen are going to say all is OK. Their jobs and families rely on this resource. Of course the tourism industry is going to downplay the effects. Wouldn't you?

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