Just found this Thought I would Post it.
People who fish in the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes and parts of the Mississippi River should limit their consumption of what they catch, after a former 3M chemical was detected in fish tissue from those waterways.
The Minnesota Department of Health issued the advisory this afternoon after finding the chemical, called perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), in fish taken from those waters.
The chemical has been a focus of concern after it contaminated drinking water in the east metro, and had previously been detected in the Mississippi River fish downstream of the 3M factory in Cottage Grove. State environmental officials don’t know how the chemical got into fish in Lake Calhoun.
In a news release Monday, the Minnesota Department of Health “recommends that people who eat bluegill sunfish from Lake Calhoun and several connected lakes limit their consumption to one meal per month. Because bluegill are known to move between connected lakes, the advice is being extended to bluegill taken from any of the upper chain of lakes connected to Calhoun: Brownie, Cedar, Lake of the Isles and Harriet.”
According to the health department, “A variety of health effects occur in laboratory animals exposed to high doses of PFOS… The most sensitive effects (i.e., effects observed at the lowest dose causing adverse effects) are decreased high-density lipoprotein (HDL or good cholesterol) and changes in thyroid hormone levels in some animals. Special cleaning and cooking precautions used to reduce contaminants like PCBs that concentrate in fat are not effective with PFOS.”
The chemicals pose no threat to swimmers, because they’re poorly absorbed through the skin, and “incidental ingestion of surface water while swimming would not likely expose someone to significant doses,” the health department said.
3M Co. has maintained that the levels of PFOS and related chemicals present in the environment have not been shown to be a health risk. For more information on the fish consumption advisory, go to http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/fish/index.html.
