Choose Light Tuna Over Albacore
Albacore tuna has three times as much mercury as light tuna. FDA scientists have established a daily limit for mercury and have tested hundreds of cans of tuna for the metal, but they have not told women of childbearing age how much tuna they can eat and not endanger their children.
FDA's safe dose is measured in grams of mercury per kilogram of person per day. All we need is your weight and it is a simple math problem to determine how much tuna you can eat safely.
The calculations presented here assume that you eat no other seafood at all. The FDA recommends up to 12 ounces a week of a variety of fish. If you eat other seafood, the amount of tuna that you can eat safely will be less than calculated here.
*The Environmental Working Group recommends that women of childbearing age and children under 5 not eat albacore tuna at all, because a significant portion of albacore tuna has very high mercury levels. People eating this tuna will exceed safe exposure levels by a wide margin.
If you care about this issue - even if you don't eat fish - pay attention to the news for information about mercury pollution from coal plants. Better yet, get involved in your area. In my area, we have cannot eat the fish from our lakes because of a coal plant, and a local political party has taken up the issue.
