What types of seafood are low in mercury and other persistent chemicals?

How do I avoid products that contain mercury?

What should I do if I break something that contains mercury, like a thermometer or a fluorescent light bulb?

I think my house was painted with lead paint. What are the hazards, and how can I protect myself and my family?

My garden soil has lead and arsenic. What should I do?

I heard that lead has been found in children’s lunch boxes. How can I find lead-free lunch boxes?

Is there lead in my drinking water? If so, what should I do?

What types of seafood are low in mercury and other persistent chemicals?

Safer seafood choices include wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, Atlantic herring, Dungeness crab, Pacific cod, Alaskan black cod, farmed striped bass, tilapia, farmed catfish, clams, mussels, and Pacific oysters.

Avoid bluefish, wild striped bass, American eel, spotted seatrout, marlin, king mackerel, shark, and swordfish. Women and children should not eat tilefish or tuna steaks, and should also limit their consumption of canned tuna.

Read the Washington State Department of Health’s Puget Sound Fish Consumption Advice (2.5mb PDF file) before eating Puget Sound salmon, flatfish, or rockfish. Check with state advisories before eating sport-caught fish or shellfish.

Seafood resources:

• Washington State Department of Health: Fish and Shellfish Consumption Advisories; Fish Facts for Healthy Nutrition

• Oceans Alive (Environmental Defense): Best and Worst Seafood

• Environmental Working Group: Mercury in Seafood (includes Tuna Calculator)

You can learn more about safer food choices on the Pollution in People website.

How do I avoid products that contain mercury?

• Choose digital thermometers and thermostats, which are mercury-free and readily available. Read these tips on choosing safer electronics.
  

• Watch for mercury compounds when buying drugs: read these tips on avoiding heavy metals in drugs and supplements.
  

• Avoid cosmetics and personal care products that contain mercury, such as some eye drops and wound/pain treatment ointments. Read these tips on choosing safer cosmetics and personal care products.
  

• Do not purchase imported children’s jewelry that contains liquid mercury. Read more on this Department of Health website.

Also, be sure to dispose of mercury-containing products at a household hazardous waste collection site. If products containing mercury are thrown out in the trash, they will eventually reach a landfill or incinerator, where they can pollute air and water. Click here to find a hazardous waste collection site near you.

Seafood is the primary route of exposure to mercury for most people. See the FastFacts topic above for information on choosing safer seafood.

What should I do if I break something that contains mercury, like a thermometer or a fluorescent light bulb?

When liquid mercury is spilled, it forms droplets that emit highly toxic vapors into the air. Keep people and pets away from the spill. Immediately ventilate the room, and close the room off to the rest of the house as well as you can. Wearing rubber gloves, pick up the mercury with an eyedropper or a piece of heavy paper. Place the mercury, the broken product, eyedropper or heavy paper, and gloves in a plastic bag, seal the bag, then double bag it to prevent leakage. Take the bag to the nearest household hazardous waste collection site. Click here to find a collection site near you.

If you break a fluorescent light bulb, carefully sweep up the glass fragments and fine particles, and place in a plastic bag. Wipe the area with a damp paper towel to pick up any stray shards of glass or fine particles. Place the paper towel in the plastic bag, seal the bag, and put it in a 5-gallon container with a lid. Dispose of at a household hazardous waste collection site. Open windows to allow the room to ventilate.

DO NOT use a vacuum to clean up the mercury spill. This will significantly increase the likelihood of exposure. For more information on cleaning up mercury spills, see this EPA website.

I think my house was painted with lead paint. What are the hazards, and how can I protect myself and my family?

Lead is a toxic metal that can cause reduced growth, hearing loss, and impaired learning ability, and children are especially susceptible. It is estimated that 317,000 (1.6%) of preschool children in the United States still experience lead poisoning that can cause these health effects. Toddlers are the group with the highest risk from lead in homes because of their crawling and mouthing activity as well as their vulnerable developmental stage. The amount of lead in an infant’s blood appears to be directly related to the amount of lead in the house dust. Remodeling, peeling paint, and painting in an older house may triple the lead exposure of a toddler.

If you live in a home built before 1978, it is likely to contain lead-based paint. If the paint is chipping, peeling, or otherwise deteriorating, or if you want to remodel, hire a certified abatement worker to remove or contain contaminated paint. Keep toddlers and children away from remodeling or abatement areas, peeling paint, window wells, and soil adjacent to the foundation of your home. Reduce the accumulation of lead in house dust by removing shoes at the door, using door mats, and vacuuming and cleaning regularly. For more information, read our fact sheet Reducing Exposure to Lead in Older Homes (42kb PDF file).

My garden soil has lead and arsenic. What should I do?

The levels of lead and arsenic in your soil that can be considered safe depends on how you use your land, what groundcovers are present, whether you have young children, and many other factors. You will find different levels in different parts of your yard because the distribution of metals is not constant, especially if the sources are not of natural origin. For example, lead levels are likely to be much higher near the foundation of an older home than in mid-yard.

There are some guidelines we can use to put your lead and arsenic levels into perspective. At the low end, the natural average background levels of lead and arsenic in the earth provide a baseline. You are unlikely to be able to get below these levels and they should not present much risk. At the high end, the U.S. EPA and states have established cleanup levels for these metals. The cleanup level is the concentration to which a contaminated site must be cleaned up in order not to be considered contaminated. While the residential cleanup level is supposed to be safe, it certainly represents the upper end of what is acceptable near a home. Here are the applicable numbers for lead and arsenic (units are parts per million):

So, if your levels are closer to background than cleanup levels, you shouldn’t worry. If they are near the cleanup levels, you might try to understand why and be somewhat more concerned. If your tests exceed cleanup levels, you should talk to your health department about risk reduction measures you and your family can take. Information from Seattle/King County Public Health is available here.

I heard that lead has been found in children’s lunch boxes. How can I find lead-free lunch boxes?

If you have a lunch box made of vinyl/PVC, throw it away and choose cloth lunch bags or metal lunch boxes instead. To learn more about lead in children’s lunch boxes, see the Center for Environmental Health’s website. Tips on choosing safer kitchenware are available here, and don’t forget to choose less-toxic foods too!

Is there lead in my drinking water? If so, what should I do?

Lead is rarely found in source water, but enters tap water through corrosion of plumbing materials. Homes built before 1986 are more likely to have lead pipes, fixtures, and solder, but even today’s legally “lead-free” plumbing is allowed to contain up to 8% lead. The most common problem is with brass or chrome-plated brass faucets and fixtures, which can leach significant amounts of lead into the water, especially hot water.

Avoid exposure to lead that may be leaching from plumbing by flushing your cold water pipes (run water until it becomes as cold as it will get) before drinking, and only use cold water for drinking or cooking. If you want to test your drinking water for lead, lists of certified water testing labs are available by calling your local health department. You can also choose to filter lead out of your water, in addition to the guidelines above. There are many water filtration systems that can remove lead; be sure to choose a product certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. For more information on water filters, read these guidelines from the National Sanitation Foundation.

For more information on lead in drinking water, see this EPA website.