From a B.C. board.

In refrence to recent studies that find a risk in eating farmed salmon a Purdue researcher had theses comments.

The studies, Charles Santerre of Purdue University found, exaggerated the PCB content of farm salmon by using parts per trillion (ppt) as a base. The salmon therefore contained 50,000 ppt of PCBs. Sounds big, even alarming, especially when the FDA puts the safe level at 2,000 parts per billion. Note the difference: parts per trillion versus parts per billion. In fact, the PCB count found in the salmon equals 50 parts per billion, or a fraction of the safe level.


The new study, Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon, found PCB contaminants averaging 36 parts per billion in farm salmon, or a fraction of the FDA and Health Canada suggested limits. In other words, the farm salmon is safe.

The risk element was heightened by a researcher who said "Canadian consumers could be exposing themselves to up to 10 times greater levels of contaminants from the farmed fish than from the wild fish."

The 36 ppb of PCBs in farm salmon ay indeed be 10 times the three ppb of PCBs in wild fish. But as Mr. Santerre put it in an interview yesterday, the level in wild fish is essentially nothing, and "10 times nothing is still nothing."

And then there's the health risk. If all Canadians ate 225 grams of salmon containing 2,000 ppb of PCBs every week, over 70 years, we would have one additional cancer for every 100,000 people. Since everyone will pretty well be dead over a 70-year period, the risks are minuscule to non-existent.

But Mr. Santerre sees a greater risk from not eating salmon. In U.S. terms, 250,000 Americans die of cardiac arrest every year. It is estimated that as many as 40% of those deaths could be avoided if people ate more salmon, which contains beneficial forms of fat. Eating salmon could, hypothetically, save 100,000 lives a year, or 400 lives saved for every 100,000 people per year. That compares with the one case of cancer for each 100,000 people over 70 years.

Farm salmon could save lives. It's media science that kills.