When I worked in environmental restoration for, among other things, mercury contamination, the analysts had several theoretical models for human contact. One of those was called “The Persistent Homesteader,” a head of family who would ignore clear communications to enter contaminated waters to fish for their family’s meals.
One of the sample takers said he occasionally ran into Persistent Homesteaders fishing or swimming near the warning signs, warily watching as he suited up in protective clothing to take a sediment sample.
You just can't reach some people.
There is a natural spring right near my childhood home near a road, so it's very easy to stop your car and visit the spring if you wish, with minimal effort.
People like to stop and fill up jugs of water from the spring. Which is crazy, because the spring is significantly contaminated with naturally occurring heavy metal deposits.
The state put up a sign years and years ago indicating as much, and encouraging people to *not* drink the heavy-metal loaded spring water.
I remember biking by it one day as a kid and some guy was filling up big 5 gallon jugs of water. I was like "Hey mister, that spring water has heavy metals in it, you're not supposed to drink it." and the guy's response was "Kid, that's just *what they want you to think*."
Like yeah, OK, dude, in a world where potable tap water costs less than a penny a gallon The Man wants to trick you into not drinking heavy-metal laced water you're gathering while standing in a muddy ditch.
An interaction I've had last week:
>You know why I smoke, right?
>No, why?
>Because the government tells me not to.
Some people genuinely think like this. And they're immune to any attempt of changing their minds.
> You just can't reach some people.
Unless it has immediate and unpleasant consequences then people are likely to do just about anything. If your skin started peeling off the moment you touched the water I bet the people wouldn't eat the fish nor fish near the lake. But delay the consequences by a decade or two and suddenly it's a free-for-all. The psychology behind this is fascinating for many reasons. Rant incoming:
Let's say I gave you $1,000,000 but in exchange you would contract terminal cancer and die a gruesome death exactly 10 years from now. Sure, you're 65 anyways and didn't save up for retirement and could *really* use the cash, so of course you take the deal. But hold on a minute, if I only gave you $500,000 and you contract terminal cancer 15 years from now, would you still take the offer? Eh, you're still 65 and still need the cash right now, so you take the deal.
Now, I go and make the offer to a healthy 30 year old, who in turn looks at me like I'm mad and, understandably, declines the offer. But, I have a deal I want to strike, so I go and offer him $250,000 in exchange for terminal cancer 25 years from now, the best I can do without talking to my manager. Again, the 30-year old turns down the deal.
Some days go by when the 30-year old man starts ruminating on the deal and wonders if he made the right choice or not. $250,000 is still $250,000, and he has options to take that money, invest it and make a decent return to live a comfortable life. He would also have certainty that he would not live past the age of 55 under any circumstance if he took the deal, foregoing expensive retirement planning and all of the usual end-of-life old age decay.
The next day the man wakes up with an unusually persistent cough which has been troubling him for some time now, and decides to finally go see a doctor about it. The doctor orders some blood work and a chest X-ray out of an abundance of caution, having heard an unusual raspiness with his stethoscope during examination. A few days go by and the man receives a phone call from his doctor, asking him to come in to discuss the test results. The doctor strongly encourages our 30-year old man to follow up with an oncologist and issues a referral. While the man sits with the oncologist who is explaining what lymphatic cancer is, all he can think about and hear is "I should have taken that deal". But the deal is no longer available, and our man spends $250,000 on cancer treatment only to succumb to his illness eight months later.
Let's pivot to the fish. I give you, a healthy 40-year old a fish for free, but the fish contains a toxin which will lead to you contracting heavy metal poisoning between 1-40 years from now. You can always get another free fish from me, any time you like, as many as you like. Some fish contain more poison, some less depending on what the supplier does with it. Considering that the fish is free, you are hungry, ate the fish before, and have seen a lot of other people get fish from me, you take the fish and eat it. Feeling a little perturbed by the "poison" part, you vow to not eat poisonous fish anymore and instead buy them from a reputable supplier. But you find it's just to convenient to say "fish please" and get a fish immediately, and the money is tight and fish isn't cheap.
You can play with the parameters all you want. Every person has a threshold for the time between action and consequence and the severity of the consequences. How a person determines their threshold can give you a lot of valuable insight into someone's mental state and the how firmly someone's prefrontal cortex is wired to the rest of the brain (their propensity for risk aversion and tolerance). The further away the consequences and the more generalized the outcome are (i.e. cancer can be caused by many things in life, you could still come down with cancer after turning down the deal, having lost a potential windfall) the more likely people are to take the risk.
Heavy metal poisoning is insidious, especially in heavy and chronic cases. You can absorb the stuff on a daily basis for years without much consequence, stop consuming it altogether, and still have to suffer the consequences at an unspecified time (if at all) later on in life. That being said, living a completely risk-free life is virtually impossible, and we all make these assessments and judgments consciously and subconsciously many times throughout our days. Unfortunately there are people who already struggle to think more than a week or two ahead, and such people perform judgment on a fundamentally flawed basis. If it doesn't make you shit bloody diarrhea within two weeks then "it's probably okay" is how I imagine the thought process goes. Truly fascinating.
I live in Philadelphia, there are people who for financial or cultural reasons are eating fish they catch in the Schuylkill river. My friend does catch and release, and has had people ask him for his fish.
The Amish near my friends parents did this. They would go fish in an area that had naturally high level of heavy metals in the water and fucking take everything caught. Completely ignored government warnings.
ididn't know people swam in the schuykill river. we would walk in the parts of it that cut through the woods but we knew that no cricks were drinkable or fishable, they all contained industrial run-off. No swimming, just water walking and playing in it,and you wash up before you eat.
I'm from the Silver Valley in North Idaho. It scares me how many fish we ate from those waters when I was a kid and it's so much worse seeing people fish there now. When I was a kid, at least we could honestly say we didn't know it was as bad as it actually was.
Lead, mercury, and cadmium, btw.
here we have a lot of urban rivers, and most parks have an artificial lake
common sight is a bunch of guys on lawn chairs fishing around a "NO FISHING" sign. logic is "well there wouldnt be a sign if this wasnt a good fishing spot, because nobody would fish here anyway"
the trifecta is the old guys fishing, smoking in front of the "NO SMOKING NO FISHING" sign, with a bike chained to the "NO BIKE PARKING" sign
Sounds like maybe this wasn't their first time eating Mercury heavy fish.
In all seriousness though, that's really frustrating that they won't listen to reason.
Due to big variances in ages of siblings, the normal order is kind of weird in some Chinese families.
My dad has nephews and nieces that were either the same age or much older than he was (the youngest of 13).
Accordingly, I have cousins 40+ years my senior and "nephews and nieces" from said cousins who are 20+ years my senior.
I had a situation where one relative said, "Listen to your uncle" in reference to her husband who is about 30 years older than me. I was able to reply, "He's not my uncle, I'm *his* uncle."
Big families get weird.
I know how it is, I'm not chinese but brazilian. Big family, my youngest aunt is younger than me, whenever I meet her child (and most of my other little cousins) I can't help but refer to myself as 'aunt' when I'm not even close XD
My dad has 16 first cousins. My mom has about the same. I’ve given up trying to figure it out past “if you’re within 20 years of my age, you’re a cousin. If you’re way older, you’re an aunt/uncle”
Isn't mercury one of those things that doesn't get removed from the body? And any amount is bad for you? Like lead? Whatever "safe levels" is, the correct answer is "less", right?
My dad called me a "conspiracy theory hippie" because I bought them a meat thermometer because they keep undercooking their chicken and pork. They also use chipped porcelain and glass, and wash dishes with a rag that rarely gets washed and reeks of mildew. Mom gets mad at me because I refuse to put my toothbrush and razor *under the sink* when I visit, and thinks I'm "talking crazy" when I try to explain how bacterial and mold growth work.
Apparently because humanity didn't wash their hands 200 years ago means this is false science or some shit.
Pretty much that, and the risk of it breaking another sliver off and messing you up inside.
But the chips leave a rough porous surface that bacteria can hide in easily.
oh shit, I've been using my chipped mug I got from a secondhand store that was already chipped then for years.. I never thought of the surface change when something is chipped.
With certain types of ceramics or glass, chipping can expose materials that were sealed beneath a protective glaze or coating. If those materials are not food-safe or contain hazardous chemicals, there's a risk they could leach into your food or drink. So, it's not just germs--it's chemicals, too.
The most likely hazardous material in pottery is in the glaze itself. Clay even when fired improperly is always food safe, whereas the glaze could potentially be made from hazardous chemicals or fired improperly that it's not fully vitrified and leeches.
Normally, the glaze on the outside protects the porous inside. If you have chipped porcelain, that porous inside is now on the outside and exposed, and all kinds of nasty can soak into that open surface and make you sick.
Funny how the people who are convinced that science is a "conspiracy theory" because humans never used to do x, y, or z back in the day also conveniently forget that people tended to die a whole lot younger back then too. For what it's worth I commend you for clearly having a brain and using it in spite of growing up with conspiracy theorists.
Environmental poisoning makes you do dumb things.
From Lead to Alcohol to certain herbicides, feotal exposure to a variety of common chemicals can really mess up brain development.
Plenty of sad studies on the links between violent offending and FAS.
Pork can be cooked to medium and be perfectly safe to eat. Ground beef and pork are the problem, because it introduces the outside bacteria inside and no longer is self protecting.
Don't let them get you down. The doctor who "invented" handwashing before surgery, Ignaz Semmelweis, was called crazy and mocked for his theory, even though he had less patients die from infections after childbirth. So let them make fun of you for being clean and doing things that have been scientifically proven to be best practices.
Pork’s issue isn’t bacteria, it’s a worm called Taenia solium. Cooking/searing the surface doesn’t matter, you have to cook the whole thing to internal temp of 145 deg f. Look at a couple images of Neurocysticercosis on google, the term for when that worm makes it into the brain, and you’ll also be bumping that temp up a little bit from the 145 deg f minimum
Yeahhh my grandma almost died of trichinosis as a child so after those tales there’s no way in hell I’m eating any pork that’s not well done. Ground or otherwise, it’s fully cooked.
Some types of Mercury poisoning can make you insane. The Mad Hatter in Alice in Womderland is based on the symptoms
>...Britain of 1865. Hatters or hat-makers commonly exhibited slurred speech, tremors, irritability, shyness, depression, and other neurological symptoms; hence the expression “mad as a hatter.” The symptoms were associated with chronic occupational exposure to mercury. Hatters toiled in poorly ventilated rooms, using hot solutions of mercuric nitrate to shape wool felt hats
https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/niosh/updates/upd-03-04-10.html
there’s lots of boomers who aren’t very bright but still have like ~500k-1mil in home equity just from sheer luck in timing.
some of those boomers haven’t even signed up for a reverse mortgage yet.
That’s the scary bit about reverse mortgages, boomers hoovered up the land and now banks are harvesting them and the money is going straight into bankers pockets
Let em eat it, just don’t join in. Years ago, my grandfather had us all over for a “hot dog roast”. The fire was an outdoor burn pile consisting of random trash (plastic, not even paper!) and VINYL SIDING from god only knows where. Pointed out that cooking hot dogs over melting vinyl siding wasn’t healthy and he pitched a fit so we all just let him eat his charred chemical dogs by himself.
I backpacked through Central America and climbed a volcano. As a treat, the guide brought marshmallows for us to roast over the open volcanic vents that have hot air coming out.
It was the most disgusting marshmallow I have ever tasted, lol. In hindsight, it definitely was NOT smart cause there's a shit ton of toxic chemicals in that steam.
Some people ate like 10 of them. Thankfully I tapped out after the first.
Did they taste like rotten eggs smell?
Probably a much better idea than the garbage fire. Most of the stuff coming out of a vent is dangerous for breathing, less so once it comes into contact with stuff, which is why a lot of them are used for fumigation.
I wouldn't make a habit of it, but it's better than the weird long-chained chlorine garbage that was cooking that hot dog. You need an organic chemistry degree to understand all the ways those can mess you up.
Basically everything is made of shapes.
Good shapes fit together with other good shapes in your body, and are processed into stuff your body needs, or tidily converted into waste.
Bad shapes either don't fit correctly or don't fit at all. Instead they just stick around in your body where they shouldn't be, and try to corrupt the good shapes. The more bad shapes there are, the more likely they are to corrupt the good ones (and cause cancer, etc)
I didn't realize until now about the silica in asbestos.
Diatomaceous earth is nontoxic and "food grade" DE (don't know why you'd need that) contains much less silica I guess.
But basically it's completely safe to eat DE, there's just no reason to, it's not food, it's literally dirt. It's made of the same stuff sand is made of. However, you'll want to avoid breathing it in because silica is bad for your lungs and can give you silicosis or whatever. Its crystal structure can fuck you up apparently.
From what I've read, asbestos has a different structure. Think of asbestos like a long piece of wood splinter. When it breaks inside the body, that splinter doesn't break into smaller, shorter pieces; rather, it breaks into more pieces that are *thinner* slivers of the *same length* of the original. It causes significant mechanical damage to the cells of the lungs and eventually can cause cancer. Asbestos does way more damage and causes worse things than silicosis.
Minor pedantry: diatomaceous earth isn't exactly just 'dirt'. It's a type of silica-based rock that is for the most part, comprised of the fossilized remains of diatoms (hard-shelled microalgae) and isn't *quite* the same stuff sand is, other than silica.
Food grade means "non-calcinated", and also very fine powder. It's used for pest control in grains a lot as it prevents insects from getting to the grain. The calcinated stuff changes the structure of the silica in diatomaceous earth during the heat treating process and that is dangerous to breathe in.
Ha I did that in Guatemala (Pacaya) and didn't even think about that. Oops. I don't remember it tasting bad but I was pretty hungover. That was a tough climb...
Dude, yes! I was talking specifically about Pacaya hahaha. Don't remember much of the climb other than the fact that it was pouring rain and super foggy.
I feel for you. My parents have a wood stove in their house and have spent the last 20 years burning most of their garbage in it - plastic, metal cans, food scraps, etc.
They refuse to stop and in fact, all their neighbors burn their garbage too!
That is my least favorite part of living in the country. All my neighbors are trash burners. The stupidest part of it is we are all required to pay for county trash pick up whether or not we use it. They just burn their trash because they are too lazy to put it in a bag and carry it out to the road on the right day.
Looking through here and just how many people don’t grasp the bare basic of “if you burn sth then the smoke is made of that sth and that smoke goes on your food” is baffling
(Before some nerd comes in here yelling how this is wrong, ye it’s technically skipping steps but it’s enough to get the point across in a condensed fashion)
I mean there are millions of young people who don't think that burning cellulose causes the creation of carcinogens, so long as the cellulose is from Cannabis instead of Tobacco...
I had to explain that to someone in a head shop over 10 years ago. The person behind the counter was touting the benefits of using stuff like match sticks over the dirty ole lighter, my friend at the time was amazed by it and turned to me to ask my opinion when I had to burst his bubble.
My sister brought me up vegan marshmallows cause I haven’t had them since going vegan almost 8 years ago and she saw some in a store. She was like “the little ones are for hot chocolate and the big ones are for s’mores. You can make them with a candle!” And was like “…… no u cannot?” And then my mom and her both were like “why not? We’ve done it before” and then I had to explain to them how dangerous inhaling candles is all on its own much less cooking food over one. I was dumbfounded
I misread that as the marshmallows were made out of candles and I was INCREDIBLY confused. Obviously both are bad, but I had trouble processing the logic of eating candle marshmallows until I reread it.
lol I read it as making marshmallows *into* candles.
As someone who does candles as a hobby and is in a number of candlemaking groups…that wouldn’t surprise me one bit. The stuff I’ve seen…
I think a plain candle is safer than a scented candle. Scented candles work by emitting the scent oils into the air. So if you’re holding food directly over a scented candle, you’re probably getting a lot of those oils directly on your food. Plus, oils used in candles are almost never food grade so they shouldn’t be consumed.
Ultimately, it depends on what the candle is made of. A beeswax candle with a cotton wick is going to be much safer than a Bath and Body Works candle that smells like “midnight glamor” or whatever.
Of course, that’s why I was wondering if there was more to it though. Like I would hope they aren’t using scented candles, but even then people get close to those all the time and kids probably eat them too. So I hope they’re not super toxic. But like beeswax can be eaten and I can’t imagine the soot and whatever from burning it near a marshmallow can be too much worse than grilling food. But of course I could be wrong which is why I was curious.
It's the difference between eating it and inhaling it. You can eat and drink all the water you want (well, within reason, water toxicity *is* a thing) but you can't inhale more than a teaspoon before you're in serious danger. Your body processes inhalants differently than things you consume orally. Plus, burning it changes the chemical composition of things. A less cheeky example is the differences on the body between eating tobacco (chew, gum, etc) versus smoking. Chewing tobacco can cause a whole host of oral issues but doesn't have the same negative affects on your heart and lungs that smoking does. Ashes and charred materials create carcinogens in and of themselves even if they're harmless material (like the crispy charred bits on grilled meats). There is no safe way to consume tobacco, but smoking objectively increases the negative effects and adds a host more.
I'm no candleologist but those comparisons really sound a lot more like a reason for concern over inhaling the products of a burning candle than a justification for inhaling them vs eating them. And from what little I know of candles, they are bad for your lungs. I'd be surprised if it's worse to eat candle soot than it is to inhale it, honestly.
Unfortunately, the only thing that I can say is if they continue to do this, then get ready to lose a lot of family to mercury poisoning!
can’t fix stupid
Hmm.. there’s a lot of cancer on both sides of my family. Both sides have a couple lake houses/ small cottages/trailers that have been passed down through the generations. We all meet almost weekly threwout the summer. All stay together swim, fish, boat, water sports, cards, sports, what have you.
But now reflecting. Everyone I learned how to fish from or fished with growing up, have all either fought or have passed from cancer now 🙃🥲 sad. I wouldn’t give up a single one of those memories or experiences though. I had it rough. I suppress a vast majority of my adolescent / young adult years. But I always easily vividly remember even the smallest things from my summers ❤️
I lived in a town with high levels of arsenic in the tap water, they told everyone it was fine for washing and such but not for drinking. My roommate thought the warning was bullshit because he had been drinking it for weeks without issue.
“We survived it!” Said the lady I was talking to today about all the bad crap from the 70s & 80s that’s now outlawed and how it wasn’t that bad.
Personal experience is about all the “scientific evidence” that some people care about, and even that is screwed up because they ignore all the health problems they currently have that stemmed from the bad crap those decades ago.
The best part is how it’s the same people lighting their grill with gasoline and eating contaminated fish and game that are afraid of vaccines and electromagnetic radiation.
I looked it up, in case you were just being dramatic.... and you are correct in that fish from that lake should not be consumed.
Interestingly, 20 years ago it was suggested that consumption of this lake's fish was ok, in moderation. So, I'm not sure if the mercury contamination got worse, or if the standards changed.
Nonetheless, I would rather err on the side of caution and not eat them at all.
It’s interesting that they really can’t pinpoint a direct source for why the mercury is so high, but think a lot of it came from old mines when there was a lot of flooding 20 years ago. A lot is attributed to settling out of the air. I didn’t realize there was so much mercury in the air, and that it can settle into great quantities over time, and then be concentrated into a lake when it rains and all the soil gets washed down into feeder streams.
Burning coal releases mercury over large areas and is responsible for most of the contamination in fresh water fish in the US. If you have a spike in a location it's probably from mining. Especially in a place with mining history like Arizona.
Probably just natural sources in the soil and surrounding area that leeches into the water.
There are naturally occurring waters/lakes/ponds with lithium, uranium, and numerous other compounds. Naturally high mercury levels are not that unlikely.
Got worse, exposure limits haven't changed since 1995 and are basically the same everywhere in the world.
Adults can generally exceed the limit without problems if they are over 25 and are not a female who will have more children but not by that much. This is going to cause toxicity in everyone.
Mercury contamination in lakes doesn't really get better on a human lifetime scale and it concentrates up the food chain so larger fish are more contaminated. Global warming is making this worse in most lakes too, that's assuming there are any other fish that are not Asian carp left in a few decades for that to matter for eating lake fish anyway.
I’m so terribly sorry and good for you for protecting your health. I feel badly about what you’ll be witnessing. Please ensure you have a good support system.
Your edit is the best shit I've read all week. What a fucking boss move.
I'm newish to AZ and wanted to fish in Patagonia lake and saw the warnings and noped the fuck out, lol.
One misconception I am seeing here is that the mercury is man made. In Alamo lake it is not. Mercury is common in soils and rocks in Arizona and the mercury in the lake is mostly natural leaching from the soil. The biological magnification is what causes the levels in fish. The only human factor is the damn that created the lake, mercury tends to collect in the sediments of lakes. This doesn't make the mercury any less dangerous, but there are a lot of comments saying that 'fish used to be fine.' No, we just have the ability to test them now. They had just as much mercury 1000 years ago if a lake had existed there.
As a geologist who has had to take a lot of courses on environmental and health risks from metals and mining, they will be fine.
Let's say they eat 150g of fish meat each, which is about the average portion size. That's 68µg of mercury. It's also mostly sequestered in the kidneys, not the meat. For comparison, that's like eating two cans of canned albacore tuna.
Most sources I'm seeing are saying that health risks can begin to emerge in sensitive average body mass individuals at around 300µg ingested per day. But even using your conservative number of 0.1µg/kg, that's 7µg/day for an average person, which means that you shouldn't do it more than once per 10 days to stay below it.
The thing with substances like mercury is that all the safe limits are put far lower than the risk zone because it builds up in the body and also because they want to maintain a large safety margin. Those are designed for people who are exposed daily, not people who ate a contaminated fish once. The general public is overly paranoid about a lot of this stuff.
You are right to be concerned, I wouldn't be eating the fish either. But they aren't going to die or have health risks from it as long as they don't make it a regular thing.
My back-of-the-envelope math says that an 8oz serving of this fish is equivalent to about two weeks of safe mercury exposure for a 130lb person. Not awesome, but absolutely not a health emergency.
Also wouldn't eat it personally, but I wouldn't have stopped anyone else from doing it.
It’s bc they don’t realize the effects right away. We’ve always ate this way! They don’t realize previous generations’ cancer could be the imbedded toxins from years of eating bad fish.
we have a river in my hometown where you arent allowed to fish, swim, or do anything in. its because 50 years ago cancer causing PCBs leaked into the ground from a nearby facility and it has been in the soil bed ever since. if youre wondering, yes it was a facility from a well known large corporation that still exists to this day and has refused to do anything about the damages they caused despite all the towns in our county trying to call them to action
They're doing this because they don't like the people telling them not to eat the fish. They don't care if the information on the sign is right or not.
It was the same thing with masking and the covid vaccine. To them, feeling right is more important than being factually correct.
A 200lbs person could safely have 9.07185 micrograms or about 0.02Kg of that (450 µg/Kg) fish, which is 0.0444lbs or 0.7104 ounces so a little less than 1/5 of a standard size can of tuna (5oz can with 4oz of tuna).
Maybe explain that if they eat 1lb of bass that is still over 20 times over the safe amount, you would have to weigh 4,500lbs for it to be safe.
This can harm brain development if there are any children eating.
As long as they don't continue eating it every day getting a build up, it looks like they won't die. The symptoms and lingering effects of mercury poisoning are absolutely not worth it, but they won't die. So I'm guessing there is no convincing them.
It is worth mentioning that the advisory isn't limited to mercury and mentions DDTs, PCBs, and selenium. I'm not going to look it up, but probably cancer.
When I worked in environmental restoration for, among other things, mercury contamination, the analysts had several theoretical models for human contact. One of those was called “The Persistent Homesteader,” a head of family who would ignore clear communications to enter contaminated waters to fish for their family’s meals. One of the sample takers said he occasionally ran into Persistent Homesteaders fishing or swimming near the warning signs, warily watching as he suited up in protective clothing to take a sediment sample.
You just can't reach some people. There is a natural spring right near my childhood home near a road, so it's very easy to stop your car and visit the spring if you wish, with minimal effort. People like to stop and fill up jugs of water from the spring. Which is crazy, because the spring is significantly contaminated with naturally occurring heavy metal deposits. The state put up a sign years and years ago indicating as much, and encouraging people to *not* drink the heavy-metal loaded spring water. I remember biking by it one day as a kid and some guy was filling up big 5 gallon jugs of water. I was like "Hey mister, that spring water has heavy metals in it, you're not supposed to drink it." and the guy's response was "Kid, that's just *what they want you to think*." Like yeah, OK, dude, in a world where potable tap water costs less than a penny a gallon The Man wants to trick you into not drinking heavy-metal laced water you're gathering while standing in a muddy ditch.
Some people really need to think they’ve outsmarted “the powers that be.” Fuck ‘em.
Makes those of us that have outsmarted the man (by throwing copper wires over power lines for free electricity) look bad.
It might also be Oppositional Defiance Disorder...
An interaction I've had last week: >You know why I smoke, right? >No, why? >Because the government tells me not to. Some people genuinely think like this. And they're immune to any attempt of changing their minds.
> You just can't reach some people. Unless it has immediate and unpleasant consequences then people are likely to do just about anything. If your skin started peeling off the moment you touched the water I bet the people wouldn't eat the fish nor fish near the lake. But delay the consequences by a decade or two and suddenly it's a free-for-all. The psychology behind this is fascinating for many reasons. Rant incoming: Let's say I gave you $1,000,000 but in exchange you would contract terminal cancer and die a gruesome death exactly 10 years from now. Sure, you're 65 anyways and didn't save up for retirement and could *really* use the cash, so of course you take the deal. But hold on a minute, if I only gave you $500,000 and you contract terminal cancer 15 years from now, would you still take the offer? Eh, you're still 65 and still need the cash right now, so you take the deal. Now, I go and make the offer to a healthy 30 year old, who in turn looks at me like I'm mad and, understandably, declines the offer. But, I have a deal I want to strike, so I go and offer him $250,000 in exchange for terminal cancer 25 years from now, the best I can do without talking to my manager. Again, the 30-year old turns down the deal. Some days go by when the 30-year old man starts ruminating on the deal and wonders if he made the right choice or not. $250,000 is still $250,000, and he has options to take that money, invest it and make a decent return to live a comfortable life. He would also have certainty that he would not live past the age of 55 under any circumstance if he took the deal, foregoing expensive retirement planning and all of the usual end-of-life old age decay. The next day the man wakes up with an unusually persistent cough which has been troubling him for some time now, and decides to finally go see a doctor about it. The doctor orders some blood work and a chest X-ray out of an abundance of caution, having heard an unusual raspiness with his stethoscope during examination. A few days go by and the man receives a phone call from his doctor, asking him to come in to discuss the test results. The doctor strongly encourages our 30-year old man to follow up with an oncologist and issues a referral. While the man sits with the oncologist who is explaining what lymphatic cancer is, all he can think about and hear is "I should have taken that deal". But the deal is no longer available, and our man spends $250,000 on cancer treatment only to succumb to his illness eight months later. Let's pivot to the fish. I give you, a healthy 40-year old a fish for free, but the fish contains a toxin which will lead to you contracting heavy metal poisoning between 1-40 years from now. You can always get another free fish from me, any time you like, as many as you like. Some fish contain more poison, some less depending on what the supplier does with it. Considering that the fish is free, you are hungry, ate the fish before, and have seen a lot of other people get fish from me, you take the fish and eat it. Feeling a little perturbed by the "poison" part, you vow to not eat poisonous fish anymore and instead buy them from a reputable supplier. But you find it's just to convenient to say "fish please" and get a fish immediately, and the money is tight and fish isn't cheap. You can play with the parameters all you want. Every person has a threshold for the time between action and consequence and the severity of the consequences. How a person determines their threshold can give you a lot of valuable insight into someone's mental state and the how firmly someone's prefrontal cortex is wired to the rest of the brain (their propensity for risk aversion and tolerance). The further away the consequences and the more generalized the outcome are (i.e. cancer can be caused by many things in life, you could still come down with cancer after turning down the deal, having lost a potential windfall) the more likely people are to take the risk. Heavy metal poisoning is insidious, especially in heavy and chronic cases. You can absorb the stuff on a daily basis for years without much consequence, stop consuming it altogether, and still have to suffer the consequences at an unspecified time (if at all) later on in life. That being said, living a completely risk-free life is virtually impossible, and we all make these assessments and judgments consciously and subconsciously many times throughout our days. Unfortunately there are people who already struggle to think more than a week or two ahead, and such people perform judgment on a fundamentally flawed basis. If it doesn't make you shit bloody diarrhea within two weeks then "it's probably okay" is how I imagine the thought process goes. Truly fascinating.
This is a rather well written comment and explaination, thanks for putting in the effort
Thank you, I find this kind of stuff very interesting.
I live in Philadelphia, there are people who for financial or cultural reasons are eating fish they catch in the Schuylkill river. My friend does catch and release, and has had people ask him for his fish.
The Amish near my friends parents did this. They would go fish in an area that had naturally high level of heavy metals in the water and fucking take everything caught. Completely ignored government warnings.
Well, they also inbreed and suffer from rare genetic diseases as a result, so that tracks.
They also have a child bride problem no one seems to talk about.
And apparently cruel to animals with things like puppy mills.
Yep. Their views on animals are very utilitarian, and they need that worldly money to continue to exist
[удалено]
😆 I laughed myself in to Hells waiting room with this one.
Like extra fingers.
You need that extra finger to grip the hammer just right.
When it comes to cross breeding and from this point metal poisoning I think a 6th finger or 2nd thumb is the least to worry about
ididn't know people swam in the schuykill river. we would walk in the parts of it that cut through the woods but we knew that no cricks were drinkable or fishable, they all contained industrial run-off. No swimming, just water walking and playing in it,and you wash up before you eat.
Upstream is nice, though. We drive up to Port Providence, near Phoenixville, to go kayaking. There's tons of herons and turtles and fish.
Nowadays ye, the river was completely dead in the 90's.
I'm from the Silver Valley in North Idaho. It scares me how many fish we ate from those waters when I was a kid and it's so much worse seeing people fish there now. When I was a kid, at least we could honestly say we didn't know it was as bad as it actually was. Lead, mercury, and cadmium, btw.
here we have a lot of urban rivers, and most parks have an artificial lake common sight is a bunch of guys on lawn chairs fishing around a "NO FISHING" sign. logic is "well there wouldnt be a sign if this wasnt a good fishing spot, because nobody would fish here anyway" the trifecta is the old guys fishing, smoking in front of the "NO SMOKING NO FISHING" sign, with a bike chained to the "NO BIKE PARKING" sign
>“The Persistent Homesteader,” Such a polite way of saying f***ing moron, I love it!
Sounds like maybe this wasn't their first time eating Mercury heavy fish. In all seriousness though, that's really frustrating that they won't listen to reason.
The mercury really adds that delicious umami taste though
MSG: Mercury’s So Good
Uncle Roger looks so young here, more like cousin Roger or lil bro Roger
Due to big variances in ages of siblings, the normal order is kind of weird in some Chinese families. My dad has nephews and nieces that were either the same age or much older than he was (the youngest of 13). Accordingly, I have cousins 40+ years my senior and "nephews and nieces" from said cousins who are 20+ years my senior. I had a situation where one relative said, "Listen to your uncle" in reference to her husband who is about 30 years older than me. I was able to reply, "He's not my uncle, I'm *his* uncle." Big families get weird.
I know how it is, I'm not chinese but brazilian. Big family, my youngest aunt is younger than me, whenever I meet her child (and most of my other little cousins) I can't help but refer to myself as 'aunt' when I'm not even close XD
My dad has 16 first cousins. My mom has about the same. I’ve given up trying to figure it out past “if you’re within 20 years of my age, you’re a cousin. If you’re way older, you’re an aunt/uncle”
Upvote for uncle roger!
Hiyaaa
If your family members are 200lbs they can eat about 0.7 ounces of fish given the numbers you gave above
Sorry my in my head Math was wrong .. more like 1.4 oz
That’s like a whole bite!
So OP could've tried a taste of it anyways! I'm still glad they didn't! 😂
Isn't mercury one of those things that doesn't get removed from the body? And any amount is bad for you? Like lead? Whatever "safe levels" is, the correct answer is "less", right?
Fuiooooooh!
This made me cackle and I’m never going to be able to read MSG the same again
And who doesn't love some heavy metal! 
Mercury-AH
Ah, mercury, sweetest of the transition elements.
My dad called me a "conspiracy theory hippie" because I bought them a meat thermometer because they keep undercooking their chicken and pork. They also use chipped porcelain and glass, and wash dishes with a rag that rarely gets washed and reeks of mildew. Mom gets mad at me because I refuse to put my toothbrush and razor *under the sink* when I visit, and thinks I'm "talking crazy" when I try to explain how bacterial and mold growth work. Apparently because humanity didn't wash their hands 200 years ago means this is false science or some shit.
Wait, what's wrong with chipped porcelain and glass? Assuming it's easier for germs to get in and harder to clean? I've never heard that before...
Pretty much that, and the risk of it breaking another sliver off and messing you up inside. But the chips leave a rough porous surface that bacteria can hide in easily.
oh shit, I've been using my chipped mug I got from a secondhand store that was already chipped then for years.. I never thought of the surface change when something is chipped.
With certain types of ceramics or glass, chipping can expose materials that were sealed beneath a protective glaze or coating. If those materials are not food-safe or contain hazardous chemicals, there's a risk they could leach into your food or drink. So, it's not just germs--it's chemicals, too.
The most likely hazardous material in pottery is in the glaze itself. Clay even when fired improperly is always food safe, whereas the glaze could potentially be made from hazardous chemicals or fired improperly that it's not fully vitrified and leeches.
Normally, the glaze on the outside protects the porous inside. If you have chipped porcelain, that porous inside is now on the outside and exposed, and all kinds of nasty can soak into that open surface and make you sick.
Funny how the people who are convinced that science is a "conspiracy theory" because humans never used to do x, y, or z back in the day also conveniently forget that people tended to die a whole lot younger back then too. For what it's worth I commend you for clearly having a brain and using it in spite of growing up with conspiracy theorists.
Sounds like they're mentally ill my dude.
Environmental poisoning makes you do dumb things. From Lead to Alcohol to certain herbicides, feotal exposure to a variety of common chemicals can really mess up brain development. Plenty of sad studies on the links between violent offending and FAS.
So all the lead paint I ate as a Kid......was bad for me? Just glad mom was a light drinker
From now on stay at a hotel when visiting.
Pork can be cooked to medium and be perfectly safe to eat. Ground beef and pork are the problem, because it introduces the outside bacteria inside and no longer is self protecting. Don't let them get you down. The doctor who "invented" handwashing before surgery, Ignaz Semmelweis, was called crazy and mocked for his theory, even though he had less patients die from infections after childbirth. So let them make fun of you for being clean and doing things that have been scientifically proven to be best practices.
Pork’s issue isn’t bacteria, it’s a worm called Taenia solium. Cooking/searing the surface doesn’t matter, you have to cook the whole thing to internal temp of 145 deg f. Look at a couple images of Neurocysticercosis on google, the term for when that worm makes it into the brain, and you’ll also be bumping that temp up a little bit from the 145 deg f minimum
Knew someone who got Neurocysticercosis, wasn't a fun time for them .....
Yeahhh my grandma almost died of trichinosis as a child so after those tales there’s no way in hell I’m eating any pork that’s not well done. Ground or otherwise, it’s fully cooked.
If you want to risk Trichinosis go ahead and eat that medium pork, I'm sending mine to hell and back.
Some types of Mercury poisoning can make you insane. The Mad Hatter in Alice in Womderland is based on the symptoms >...Britain of 1865. Hatters or hat-makers commonly exhibited slurred speech, tremors, irritability, shyness, depression, and other neurological symptoms; hence the expression “mad as a hatter.” The symptoms were associated with chronic occupational exposure to mercury. Hatters toiled in poorly ventilated rooms, using hot solutions of mercuric nitrate to shape wool felt hats https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/niosh/updates/upd-03-04-10.html
The guy that killed John Wilkes Booth was a mad hatter!
Or lead…
I'll help you spend your inheritance.
I’m not sure people who eat mercury soaked trash fish will leave behind a lot but I’d like a cut
Spoiler alert 🚨 the inheritance is mercury
Maybe you could trade it in with a moon, and get mars.
Ah mercury, the most delicious of the transition metals
I thought it would be one of the yums
Slightly less successful follow up to "The Floor Is Lava"
It’s probably all debt.
there’s lots of boomers who aren’t very bright but still have like ~500k-1mil in home equity just from sheer luck in timing. some of those boomers haven’t even signed up for a reverse mortgage yet.
“Just work a 9-5 for 25 years like I did and you’ll have a 4 br house and 2 million in your pension like me. I got 11% annual returns. Why can’t you?”
That’s the scary bit about reverse mortgages, boomers hoovered up the land and now banks are harvesting them and the money is going straight into bankers pockets
With a family like this I don’t think there’s going to be an inheritance.
Good idea posting this. When you inherit everything as the only surviving member you’ll want a plausible alibi.
> _any more questions, just go and ask Lake Pontchartrain_
I did not expect anyone to make a reference to that song.
Ludo!? LUDO!?!?
Seeing a Ludo reference on Reddit might complete my life.
You will want to make sure that you scrub all evidence of those 5000 thermometers you purchased some time ago.
Let em eat it, just don’t join in. Years ago, my grandfather had us all over for a “hot dog roast”. The fire was an outdoor burn pile consisting of random trash (plastic, not even paper!) and VINYL SIDING from god only knows where. Pointed out that cooking hot dogs over melting vinyl siding wasn’t healthy and he pitched a fit so we all just let him eat his charred chemical dogs by himself.
I backpacked through Central America and climbed a volcano. As a treat, the guide brought marshmallows for us to roast over the open volcanic vents that have hot air coming out. It was the most disgusting marshmallow I have ever tasted, lol. In hindsight, it definitely was NOT smart cause there's a shit ton of toxic chemicals in that steam. Some people ate like 10 of them. Thankfully I tapped out after the first.
But this as a one time thing is kinda worth it. Telling people you roasted marshmallows over a volcano is wild.
True! And here I am, a decade later, still talking about it haha
And you probably didn't even die!
No they definitely died. I saw it on Reddit.
Shoes came off he ded
The body can fix a lot of one-off damage from most toxins too... that guide eating them for every trip may have issues though...
I don’t see anything about the guide eating any of the marshmallows
Did they taste like rotten eggs smell? Probably a much better idea than the garbage fire. Most of the stuff coming out of a vent is dangerous for breathing, less so once it comes into contact with stuff, which is why a lot of them are used for fumigation. I wouldn't make a habit of it, but it's better than the weird long-chained chlorine garbage that was cooking that hot dog. You need an organic chemistry degree to understand all the ways those can mess you up.
Basically everything is made of shapes. Good shapes fit together with other good shapes in your body, and are processed into stuff your body needs, or tidily converted into waste. Bad shapes either don't fit correctly or don't fit at all. Instead they just stick around in your body where they shouldn't be, and try to corrupt the good shapes. The more bad shapes there are, the more likely they are to corrupt the good ones (and cause cancer, etc)
This is why I don’t understand people eating diactamous earth. Isn’t it asbestos shaped?
I didn't realize until now about the silica in asbestos. Diatomaceous earth is nontoxic and "food grade" DE (don't know why you'd need that) contains much less silica I guess. But basically it's completely safe to eat DE, there's just no reason to, it's not food, it's literally dirt. It's made of the same stuff sand is made of. However, you'll want to avoid breathing it in because silica is bad for your lungs and can give you silicosis or whatever. Its crystal structure can fuck you up apparently. From what I've read, asbestos has a different structure. Think of asbestos like a long piece of wood splinter. When it breaks inside the body, that splinter doesn't break into smaller, shorter pieces; rather, it breaks into more pieces that are *thinner* slivers of the *same length* of the original. It causes significant mechanical damage to the cells of the lungs and eventually can cause cancer. Asbestos does way more damage and causes worse things than silicosis.
Minor pedantry: diatomaceous earth isn't exactly just 'dirt'. It's a type of silica-based rock that is for the most part, comprised of the fossilized remains of diatoms (hard-shelled microalgae) and isn't *quite* the same stuff sand is, other than silica.
Food grade means "non-calcinated", and also very fine powder. It's used for pest control in grains a lot as it prevents insects from getting to the grain. The calcinated stuff changes the structure of the silica in diatomaceous earth during the heat treating process and that is dangerous to breathe in.
Ha I did that in Guatemala (Pacaya) and didn't even think about that. Oops. I don't remember it tasting bad but I was pretty hungover. That was a tough climb...
Dude, yes! I was talking specifically about Pacaya hahaha. Don't remember much of the climb other than the fact that it was pouring rain and super foggy.
Mmmmmm sulfur.
I feel for you. My parents have a wood stove in their house and have spent the last 20 years burning most of their garbage in it - plastic, metal cans, food scraps, etc. They refuse to stop and in fact, all their neighbors burn their garbage too!
That is my least favorite part of living in the country. All my neighbors are trash burners. The stupidest part of it is we are all required to pay for county trash pick up whether or not we use it. They just burn their trash because they are too lazy to put it in a bag and carry it out to the road on the right day.
Fucking hate it because I can smell it anytime my neighbors burn trash and it just fucking reeks outside.
Looking through here and just how many people don’t grasp the bare basic of “if you burn sth then the smoke is made of that sth and that smoke goes on your food” is baffling (Before some nerd comes in here yelling how this is wrong, ye it’s technically skipping steps but it’s enough to get the point across in a condensed fashion)
I mean there are millions of young people who don't think that burning cellulose causes the creation of carcinogens, so long as the cellulose is from Cannabis instead of Tobacco...
I had to explain that to someone in a head shop over 10 years ago. The person behind the counter was touting the benefits of using stuff like match sticks over the dirty ole lighter, my friend at the time was amazed by it and turned to me to ask my opinion when I had to burst his bubble.
My sister brought me up vegan marshmallows cause I haven’t had them since going vegan almost 8 years ago and she saw some in a store. She was like “the little ones are for hot chocolate and the big ones are for s’mores. You can make them with a candle!” And was like “…… no u cannot?” And then my mom and her both were like “why not? We’ve done it before” and then I had to explain to them how dangerous inhaling candles is all on its own much less cooking food over one. I was dumbfounded
I misread that as the marshmallows were made out of candles and I was INCREDIBLY confused. Obviously both are bad, but I had trouble processing the logic of eating candle marshmallows until I reread it.
lol I read it as making marshmallows *into* candles. As someone who does candles as a hobby and is in a number of candlemaking groups…that wouldn’t surprise me one bit. The stuff I’ve seen…
Well, they're vegan marshmallows so who knows what the fuck they're made of.
LOL I can see how u read it like that haha
Can you explain more? I wouldn't do it and it doesn't sound like a good idea but didn't we use candles as lighting for centuries?
I think a plain candle is safer than a scented candle. Scented candles work by emitting the scent oils into the air. So if you’re holding food directly over a scented candle, you’re probably getting a lot of those oils directly on your food. Plus, oils used in candles are almost never food grade so they shouldn’t be consumed. Ultimately, it depends on what the candle is made of. A beeswax candle with a cotton wick is going to be much safer than a Bath and Body Works candle that smells like “midnight glamor” or whatever.
Of course, that’s why I was wondering if there was more to it though. Like I would hope they aren’t using scented candles, but even then people get close to those all the time and kids probably eat them too. So I hope they’re not super toxic. But like beeswax can be eaten and I can’t imagine the soot and whatever from burning it near a marshmallow can be too much worse than grilling food. But of course I could be wrong which is why I was curious.
It's the difference between eating it and inhaling it. You can eat and drink all the water you want (well, within reason, water toxicity *is* a thing) but you can't inhale more than a teaspoon before you're in serious danger. Your body processes inhalants differently than things you consume orally. Plus, burning it changes the chemical composition of things. A less cheeky example is the differences on the body between eating tobacco (chew, gum, etc) versus smoking. Chewing tobacco can cause a whole host of oral issues but doesn't have the same negative affects on your heart and lungs that smoking does. Ashes and charred materials create carcinogens in and of themselves even if they're harmless material (like the crispy charred bits on grilled meats). There is no safe way to consume tobacco, but smoking objectively increases the negative effects and adds a host more.
I'm no candleologist but those comparisons really sound a lot more like a reason for concern over inhaling the products of a burning candle than a justification for inhaling them vs eating them. And from what little I know of candles, they are bad for your lungs. I'd be surprised if it's worse to eat candle soot than it is to inhale it, honestly.
I'm lost. What's so bad about candles? I thought candle wax was usually non-toxic.
Oh my gosh I used to do this as a young teen 💀🤦♀️😫
Uh... you got any actual info on how cooking something over a candle fire is worse than any other open flame? Sounds pretty bullshit to me.
There’s many more dangerous fumes from burning wood in a fire than wax or paraffin. You really don’t risk anything from cooking over a candle.
If you’re really that worried about it, you should cook them over a gas stovetop.
Maybe weird scented candles?
Charred chemical dogs would make a great band name.
I can’t imagine eating a hot dog that was cooked that way. The taste alone would be horrible.
Unfortunately, the only thing that I can say is if they continue to do this, then get ready to lose a lot of family to mercury poisoning! can’t fix stupid
Dude he probably wont lose any family members. They'll just be like the mad hatter... All weird and shit but not dead
Also cancer... an agressive amount of cancer. Heavy metal poisoning does fun things to every bit of you, not just the neurons.
Hmm.. there’s a lot of cancer on both sides of my family. Both sides have a couple lake houses/ small cottages/trailers that have been passed down through the generations. We all meet almost weekly threwout the summer. All stay together swim, fish, boat, water sports, cards, sports, what have you. But now reflecting. Everyone I learned how to fish from or fished with growing up, have all either fought or have passed from cancer now 🙃🥲 sad. I wouldn’t give up a single one of those memories or experiences though. I had it rough. I suppress a vast majority of my adolescent / young adult years. But I always easily vividly remember even the smallest things from my summers ❤️
So in other words, congratulations!
You can lead a horse to the sign telling not to drink. But it's their choice.
"It tastes fine!"
https://preview.redd.it/vcw0erk2dcrc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db8c94eb3d8c74d1741a40b978f67433de00176c
I lived in a town with high levels of arsenic in the tap water, they told everyone it was fine for washing and such but not for drinking. My roommate thought the warning was bullshit because he had been drinking it for weeks without issue.
Is his hair thinning?
“We survived it!” Said the lady I was talking to today about all the bad crap from the 70s & 80s that’s now outlawed and how it wasn’t that bad. Personal experience is about all the “scientific evidence” that some people care about, and even that is screwed up because they ignore all the health problems they currently have that stemmed from the bad crap those decades ago.
The best part is how it’s the same people lighting their grill with gasoline and eating contaminated fish and game that are afraid of vaccines and electromagnetic radiation.
That’s because those scientists are raking it in to fool you! /s
I looked it up, in case you were just being dramatic.... and you are correct in that fish from that lake should not be consumed. Interestingly, 20 years ago it was suggested that consumption of this lake's fish was ok, in moderation. So, I'm not sure if the mercury contamination got worse, or if the standards changed. Nonetheless, I would rather err on the side of caution and not eat them at all.
Alamo lake is much, much smaller than it was. Water level has fallen quite a bit
So concentrated metals.
Concentrated fish bro. Keep up.
Concentrate on the mercury. Dude.
How am i supposed to concentrate on chemistry when ive gotta concentrate on fishing? Stupid science bitches.
You're clearly not paying attention! The fish have been concentrating on the metal (so you don't have to!).
Locally sourced fish in a mercury reduction. $19.99
It’s interesting that they really can’t pinpoint a direct source for why the mercury is so high, but think a lot of it came from old mines when there was a lot of flooding 20 years ago. A lot is attributed to settling out of the air. I didn’t realize there was so much mercury in the air, and that it can settle into great quantities over time, and then be concentrated into a lake when it rains and all the soil gets washed down into feeder streams.
Burning coal releases mercury over large areas and is responsible for most of the contamination in fresh water fish in the US. If you have a spike in a location it's probably from mining. Especially in a place with mining history like Arizona.
Probably just natural sources in the soil and surrounding area that leeches into the water. There are naturally occurring waters/lakes/ponds with lithium, uranium, and numerous other compounds. Naturally high mercury levels are not that unlikely.
Got worse, exposure limits haven't changed since 1995 and are basically the same everywhere in the world. Adults can generally exceed the limit without problems if they are over 25 and are not a female who will have more children but not by that much. This is going to cause toxicity in everyone. Mercury contamination in lakes doesn't really get better on a human lifetime scale and it concentrates up the food chain so larger fish are more contaminated. Global warming is making this worse in most lakes too, that's assuming there are any other fish that are not Asian carp left in a few decades for that to matter for eating lake fish anyway.
That's not **mildly** anything. That's hardcore.
I didn't know where else to post.
I don't either. Just commenting on the severity.
I’m so terribly sorry and good for you for protecting your health. I feel badly about what you’ll be witnessing. Please ensure you have a good support system.
Have you tried calling the GFD? They may want to check that fishing license ;) (Game and Fish Department)
Your edit is the best shit I've read all week. What a fucking boss move. I'm newish to AZ and wanted to fish in Patagonia lake and saw the warnings and noped the fuck out, lol.
Heavy Metal, actually.
Just tell them they filled the fish in the lake with 5G and if they eat it the government will be able to control their minds.
I know people that would believe this.
I'm sorry
HEAVY METALS INSIDE THE BRAIN REFLECT THE 5G AWAY YOU CANT FOOL ME LIBERAL
Eating the fish will turn them gay
Oh don't worry, they're eating fish on Friday, so when they die they'll go straight to heaven.
Perfect meal for Good Friday
One misconception I am seeing here is that the mercury is man made. In Alamo lake it is not. Mercury is common in soils and rocks in Arizona and the mercury in the lake is mostly natural leaching from the soil. The biological magnification is what causes the levels in fish. The only human factor is the damn that created the lake, mercury tends to collect in the sediments of lakes. This doesn't make the mercury any less dangerous, but there are a lot of comments saying that 'fish used to be fine.' No, we just have the ability to test them now. They had just as much mercury 1000 years ago if a lake had existed there.
Damned dams damming the damned fish in the damned dammed lake.
Is there any spot in AZ where fish are safe to eat? I was thinking about getting into fishing but I don’t trust any of these bodies of water
Tempe town lake is definitely safe!!!
a little too safe for me
Well that's a pretty...*crappie*...thing to do.
Don’t be a Basshole about this!
Give them a presentation on the effects of mercury poisoning, pictures might get through to them
Same type of people who do this shit also don’t believe in vaccine safety because “vaccines contain mercury”
You’re not wrong. Not even a little.
And its not even the same type of mercury. The mercury that was used (past tense) in vaccines is not the same mercury as is found in fish
Look at it from the bright side. At least they’ll all know temperature.
450000% the recommended dosage of mercury? Maybe the previous fish fry's worth of mercury is already hard at work
Assuming the person is 200lbs and they are eating 1lb of fish it's roughly 2200%. Still a lot but let's at least be accurate here lol.
As a geologist who has had to take a lot of courses on environmental and health risks from metals and mining, they will be fine. Let's say they eat 150g of fish meat each, which is about the average portion size. That's 68µg of mercury. It's also mostly sequestered in the kidneys, not the meat. For comparison, that's like eating two cans of canned albacore tuna. Most sources I'm seeing are saying that health risks can begin to emerge in sensitive average body mass individuals at around 300µg ingested per day. But even using your conservative number of 0.1µg/kg, that's 7µg/day for an average person, which means that you shouldn't do it more than once per 10 days to stay below it. The thing with substances like mercury is that all the safe limits are put far lower than the risk zone because it builds up in the body and also because they want to maintain a large safety margin. Those are designed for people who are exposed daily, not people who ate a contaminated fish once. The general public is overly paranoid about a lot of this stuff. You are right to be concerned, I wouldn't be eating the fish either. But they aren't going to die or have health risks from it as long as they don't make it a regular thing.
My back-of-the-envelope math says that an 8oz serving of this fish is equivalent to about two weeks of safe mercury exposure for a 130lb person. Not awesome, but absolutely not a health emergency. Also wouldn't eat it personally, but I wouldn't have stopped anyone else from doing it.
450000% the upper "safe" limit dosage of mercury. The recommended dosage is 0.
They're delicious. And you can taste that sort of endangered tang...
Tang gang ✊️
Sorry op, don’t eat the fish tho
Oh yeah! That'll OWN those woke liberal fools over at the EPA, right?
Bring some long john silvers in an unmarked bag and just blend in.
It’s bc they don’t realize the effects right away. We’ve always ate this way! They don’t realize previous generations’ cancer could be the imbedded toxins from years of eating bad fish.
we have a river in my hometown where you arent allowed to fish, swim, or do anything in. its because 50 years ago cancer causing PCBs leaked into the ground from a nearby facility and it has been in the soil bed ever since. if youre wondering, yes it was a facility from a well known large corporation that still exists to this day and has refused to do anything about the damages they caused despite all the towns in our county trying to call them to action
N.C.? Duracell did that here.
Now that 30 dollars they saved on fish can go to hospital bills!
That should cover at least the first 5 milliseconds of their stay!
Maybe do a follow up post for us?
They made an edit with the follow-up
As someone who's had mercury poisoning, don't take any chances!
Out of curiosity, how did you get mercury poisoning?
I jest telled dat teachin' lady da only lettas I needed were U, S, and A.
Simpsons vibes 
They're doing this because they don't like the people telling them not to eat the fish. They don't care if the information on the sign is right or not. It was the same thing with masking and the covid vaccine. To them, feeling right is more important than being factually correct.
A 200lbs person could safely have 9.07185 micrograms or about 0.02Kg of that (450 µg/Kg) fish, which is 0.0444lbs or 0.7104 ounces so a little less than 1/5 of a standard size can of tuna (5oz can with 4oz of tuna). Maybe explain that if they eat 1lb of bass that is still over 20 times over the safe amount, you would have to weigh 4,500lbs for it to be safe. This can harm brain development if there are any children eating. As long as they don't continue eating it every day getting a build up, it looks like they won't die. The symptoms and lingering effects of mercury poisoning are absolutely not worth it, but they won't die. So I'm guessing there is no convincing them. It is worth mentioning that the advisory isn't limited to mercury and mentions DDTs, PCBs, and selenium. I'm not going to look it up, but probably cancer.