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A panel of scientific advisors today recommended that the Food and Drug Administration should tell pregnant women to limit their consumption of tuna, and urged the FDA to quickly study what amount of tuna is safe.
It works like this: mercury gets in the water, and then certain kinds of fish (particularly tuna) retain that mercury in their systems. The mercury-laden tuna then wind up in your sandwich, and viola! Instant mercury poisoning. Of course, an adult would have to eat a hell of a lot of tuna to actually get mercury poisoning from the residual levels of heavy metal in the fish, but a pregnant woman wouldn't have to eat so much for the effects to pass on to her developing fetus.
The symptoms of mercury poisoning are almost identical to autism.
Sara's favorite snack while she was pregnant with Ben was a tuna sandwich.
Autism almost certainly has both a genetic component and an environmental component. It makes logical sense that if you take a fetus with a genetic pre-disposition for autism and then toss in mercury as a trigger, it would take far smaller dosages of the mercury to have an effect.
Bear in mind that that is just a theory, and that much research needs to be done to even begin to support or refute that theory, but it is enough to give me pause.
It works like this: mercury gets in the water, and then certain kinds of fish (particularly tuna) retain that mercury in their systems. The mercury-laden tuna then wind up in your sandwich, and viola! Instant mercury poisoning. Of course, an adult would have to eat a hell of a lot of tuna to actually get mercury poisoning from the residual levels of heavy metal in the fish, but a pregnant woman wouldn't have to eat so much for the effects to pass on to her developing fetus.
The symptoms of mercury poisoning are almost identical to autism.
Sara's favorite snack while she was pregnant with Ben was a tuna sandwich.
Autism almost certainly has both a genetic component and an environmental component. It makes logical sense that if you take a fetus with a genetic pre-disposition for autism and then toss in mercury as a trigger, it would take far smaller dosages of the mercury to have an effect.
Bear in mind that that is just a theory, and that much research needs to be done to even begin to support or refute that theory, but it is enough to give me pause.