If you thought catching fish off the West Side Highway and eating it for dinner sounded too good to be true, you may have been right.
State health officials updated fish consumption advisories earlier this week, and relaxed some restrictions on the lower Hudson River, from the Rip Van Winkle Bridge in the Catskills to the Battery in Lower Manhattan. The advisory update is due to declining levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the fish.
But the environmental group Riverkeeper says the cleanup has a long way to go and the public should continue to be wary of eating from the river.
“Eat the fish, but don't go crazy if you are in the general population,” said Drew Gamils, senior attorney for Riverkeeper. “I'd have to caution women under 50 and children under 15. [They] should be very cautious of how much they're eating because the change allows them to eat one fish meal per month. It's very limited. And definitely no feasting. Nobody should feast.”
The new guidance is not a big departure from previous advisories. The only big change is that sensitive groups such as children and pregnant women can eat an extremely limited quantity of certain fish breeds, and only from the lower Hudson River. They can only consume one serving of fish per month, defined as 8 ounces, of brown bullhead, striped bass, yellow and white perch. All other varieties including eel and carp are still not safe for eating by the general population.
”It's extremely limited. These are not crazy changes,” Gamils said. “This is not ‘Go and eat the fish without any restrictions.’ And we're dealing with a very small portion of the river.”
The advisories for the general population remain the same, according to Riverkeeper. Even varieties considered safer to consume — such as striped bass and trout — cannot be consumed more than four times per month.
“New York’s waterways are world-renowned for abundant fishing opportunities,” said New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Amanda Lefton in a statement. “It remains critical to advise of any potential health risks from contaminants that may build up in fish tissue in certain bodies of water so that anglers can make well-informed choices about consuming their catch.”
The new guidance is based on fish contamination data collected by state environmental regulators. Each year, more than 1,000 fish samples are tested to determine consumption advisories. Some species were found to have higher levels of contamination such as carp and smallmouth bass. Those varieties are not deemed safe to eat for any humans.
According to the EPA, the toxic pollution in the Hudson River is the result of two General Electric capacitor factories, Fort Edwards and Hudson Falls, that dumped more than 1 million pounds of PCBs in the Hudson River between 1947 and 1977, contaminating 200 miles of the riverbed. PCBs were widely used as fire retardants and insulation for electronic devices until 1977. They were banned by the EPA in 1979. In 1984, the Hudson River was classified as a federal Superfund site.
PCBs build up in the environment, and increase in concentration as they move up the food chain. The human health impacts from exposure include thyroid disease and birth defects. The clean-up and monitoring has been ongoing for more than 20 years.
“We're not reaching those targets. As far as the cleanup goes, we think more work is needed to eliminate or continue to reduce PCBs in the Hudson River and in fish,” Gamils said. “They're not declining enough where we can say PCBs are no longer a problem in the Hudson River and efforts through the Superfund program are still ongoing to continue to reduce.”
