Health officials warn against eating Catskills fish
Staff and wire reports Daily Freeman April 16, 2005

ALBANY - The state Health Department on Friday warned women of childbearing age and children younger than 15 to avoid eating most species of fish caught anywhere in the Catskills and Adirondacks. The advisory is one of the most expansive ever in New York regarding mercury found in fish.
The warning says young women and young children should avoid eating northern pike, pickerel, walleye, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass and larger yellow perch from all waters in the Catskill and Adirondack mountain regions because of mercury contamination.
The advisory comes after years of restricting individual ponds, lakes and other waterways.
"I think it's a reasonable thing for the state to do," said John Sheehan of The Adirondack Council, an environmental group. "We can only test a few each year, but the consistent pattern is we find contaminated fish almost every time we tested. It only makes sense."
In addition, the state Health Department issued 25 more advisories for water bodies statewide that range from eating no more than one meal per month of largemouth bass larger than 15 inches caught in Rockland County's Breakneck Pond to eating no chain pickerel of any size from Sunday Lake in Herkimer County (http://www.health.state.ny.us). There are now 117 water advisories for specific water bodies statewide.
Locally, the department advised against eating more than one meal per month of largemouth bass larger than 15 inches caught in Chodikee Lake in southern Ulster County, North-South Lake in central Greene County or the Rio Reservoir in Orange and Sullivan counties. The department also advised against eating more than one meal per month of walleye (any size) caught in Loch Sheldrake in Sullivan County.
A "meal" is defined by the Health Department as a half-pound of fish.
In 2004, 50 waterways in New York had health advisories due to elevated mercury levels, 30 of them in the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks now have nearly 40 waters with warnings, Sheehan said.
Mercury can affect a developing nervous system as well as the development of organs in a fetus, infants and young children. Some of the contaminants also may build in women and may be passed on during breast feeding, according to the Health Department.
The fish advisory was unusual because it came early in the fishing season. Previous years' warnings have come as late as August.
"It's good to see the Pataki administration is taking this seriously enough to get the advisory out on time," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
"It's tragic that we have to do this," Sheehan said. "But we may be seeing the worst of it right now."

©Daily Freeman 2005

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