I wont go into the why all this happened, just about the testing.
Back in the late 70's, the gov. tested fish in the Ouachita River, up around the state line and said the fish had high concentrations of mercury and issued warnings about eating the fish. They claimed the old oil field meters that were broken leaked mercury onto the ground and that was the cause. To this day, the commercial fishermen are restricted to fishing within the river bank. When the river floods some of the very best fishing is in the woods, but the gov. claims the fish in the woods are not safe to eat because of mercury. When I ask where the fish go when the water goes down or what happens to the mercury when the fish swim back into the river channel, they will walk off. I do this everytime I see one of the gamewardens at the river. It's gotten to the point they will leave if they even see me. I love to do it when there is a crowd of people, like at the public landing.
Now for the testing.... the gov. takes a fish out of the water and puts it on ice. They take the whole fish, put it in a grinder and grind it up, then put it in a blender and make a liquid out of it. Then they test this liquid for chemicals, such as mercury. How many people eat the head, guts, scales, skin, etc of a fish? What is the function of the liver? See what I mean? We offered to pay the gov. to test fish that we took from the woods and river and they agreed, for $1000 per fish tested. SOB's.
We found a university that could and would test the fish for $100. The university told us up front that their equipment could not register as small of trace amounts, as the governments, but it would go way below what the government has stated is safe levels to eat. They tested the fish and barely got any traces of mercury at all. When we asked why there was so much difference in their findings and the govs, they told us about how each of them tested. The university only tested the part of the fish you eat. They filleted the fish and then tested it. Kinda makes sense, doesn't it.
We even tried to get the Army Corp of Engineers to test fish for us and all hell broke loose when we showed up with the fish. When asked, they said they would do it and not charge us, but when we showed up with the fish, they refused. Then when we pushed for an answer, they threatened to call the law and have us removed from the property. When the push the issue, they claimed we might have taken the fish from other waters, that they didn't know for sure where the fish came from, so they wouldn't test them. We offered to let them come with us and get the fish, but they refused. SOB's.
Just as a footnote to all of this.... back in the 60's, Alabama or Georgia, might have been both, had a gov. ban/warning on eating quail..... mercury or something. A study was done to find out just how much you had to eat to reach the warning threshold. Using gov. figures on how much mercury? was in each bird and the gov. figure on what was the threshold, it figured out that a person had to eat 3 railroad boxcars of quail a day for a year to get enough mercury? to reach the unsafe level.
That's our gov. at work for us.
