May, 1997
For the first time in its history, the Maine State Bureau of Health has issued a warning on the amounts of saltwater species of fish it deems safe to eat from Maine's ocean waters, most notably striped bass and bluefish.
Mercury contamination in the bass and blues. Lobster tomalley dangerously high in dioxin.
Among the fresh waters, no more than six meals a year from Scarborough's Red Brook, the advisory recommends. And no fish consumption on the Little Madawaska River because of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, contamination.
And these are just recommended guidelines for what you put in your mouth. Your personal tastes may vary. Just six meals away from a potentially health-threatening situation, how far do you dare to push the envelope?
At the current rate which cancer-and-therefore-death-causing pollutants are introduced into our diets by primarily paper-related industry, how long before the recommended eating of certain fish is down to one meal a year? How long before there's no recommended eating of fish? How long before there are no fish? It's sooner than you may think. Everything moves pretty fast these days.
Is the solution to help paper companies pass pollutant guidelines by allowing them to flush their toxins downstream so their readings are within the "recommended" levels? At a time when dangerous amounts of contamination are cropping up in certain saltwater species for the first time, someone actually wants to add to that danger level just to pass a test and avoid responsibility for the source of the poison?
What's the good of removing the Smelt Hill Dam from the Presumpscot River in Falmouth to allow more saltwater fish to spawn if the habitat they return to - the ocean - is compromised?
If it wasn't lawful, it would be manslaughter.
John Alphonse is reality x editor and publisher.
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