Eating certain types of fish and sushi can be a delicious, mouth-watering dining experience, but most people don’t order muscle weakness, loss of balance, hair loss, and insomnia and memory problems for dessert. Mercury toxicity can be a serious health consequence to consuming some kinds of fish.
The Obama Administration is gearing up to announce the first-ever national protections from mercury, which would clean up mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants by 90%!
This is big news for women who are pregnant or are thinking of becoming pregnant; as it will do a lot to reduce the amount of mercury in our environment (mercury causes learning disabilities and developmental problems in kids and babies).
As part of Mercury Awareness Week (December 5-11), the Sierra Club is launching the first-ever "Safe Sushi" Smartphone app, which will help people see what kinds of sushi are safe to eat.
When ordering in restaurants, many people don't even know what kind of fish are in the sushi, so it's hard to tell if you're also being exposed to mercury. Now, this free smartphone app makes it easy to decide.
Sierra Club Launches “Safe Sushi” App
Successfully eating with chopsticks will once again be the most nerve-racking part of eating sushi, thanks to a new app that informs and educates consumers about mercury levels in fish. Safe Sushi is an app for people who love to eat sushi and want to be informed about which fish have high levels of mercury. The app can be used in two ways: sushi novices can search by mercury level (high, moderate and low) and sushi connoisseurs can search by the name of the fish.
Safe Sushi is free to download in the Android Market and will be available for free in iTunes on December 16.
Mercury is especially threatening to pregnant women and young children. Alarmingly, as many as 1 in 6 American women have enough mercury in their bodies to put a baby at risk and over 300,000 babies are born each year at risk of mercury poisoning. Safe Sushi is a practical tool for women of child-bearing age who want to educate themselves about the types of fish they should or should not consume.
Mercury comes primarily from coal-fired power plants, where it rains down into our rivers and streams and then gets into the fish. When we eat contaminated fish (such as certain types of tuna), it gets into our bodies. Safe Sushi includes a tutorial that illustrates how mercury is absorbed into the atmosphere and moves through the food chain.
The Sierra Club will celebrate Mercury Awareness Week December 5 thru 11, as President Obama is expected to issue the first nationwide protections against toxic mercury from coal plants on December 16. The mercury protections that President Obama is poised to approve would cut 90% of toxic mercury from coal-fired power plants, and thereby reduce the amount of toxic mercury in many fish – protecting women and children.For more information about the Sierra Club, the Safe Sushi app and Mercury Awareness Week, please visit www.sierraclub.org/mercury.
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