Portable dosimeter? Mercury testers for seafood?

[Paul Bacino]

Just curious if anyone has any ideas?

 

Is this over killer ?

 

I love fish but, can a consumer moniter their own-- levels of mercury and /or contaminates .  in their seafood product?

 

 

Thought Id put the conversation out there.

 

Cheers Happy Holidays

 

Paul

[GlorifiedRice]

Go check out your phones apps section. I looked on amazon but nothing

[Anna N]

How very sad that this question should even arise. That we have reached a point where we so mistrust the safety of our food supply that we feel it necessary to look for instruments that will tell us how dangerous it is. Or have we? Are we being manipulated by the media and/or scientists with an agenda? I wish I knew.

[Lisa Shock]

I recall seeing an interview with a scientist who ran tests someplace on cans of tuna. The comment she made was something along the lines of, 'we'd test dozens of cans of tuna and they'd have really low levels of mercury, but then we'd get three cans in a row with levels so high they were considered unsafe for consumption.' The gist being that on average, the tuna supply was pretty safe. But, if you were the unlucky consumer getting those three highly contaminated cans, whoever ate them could be at risk for mercury poisoning -especially small children.

[Tri2Cook]

How very sad that this question should even arise. That we have reached a point where we so mistrust the safety of our food supply that we feel it necessary to look for instruments that will tell us how dangerous it is. Or have we? Are we being manipulated by the media and/or scientists with an agenda? I wish I knew.

My personal opinion is that we're learning more about what's in our food and learning more about the potential health risks some of those things can cause but most of them have probably been there all along and aren't causing any (or many) more problems now than they ever did. Knowing what caused a health problem for somebody now versus "they just got sick" before we had the ability to figure out what caused the problem gives the appearance that it's suddenly an issue that didn't exist at an earlier time. Also there's The Bandwagon™ wherein people find out about something and suddenly it's a major problem for a large number of them even though it'd never been a problem before they found out about the potential for it. The media and drug companies feed into that new fear and suddenly it's an epidemic. Knowledge is a good thing but sometimes figuring out how to use that knowledge causes unnecessary panic.

*Disclaimer: when I die from a combination of gluten, trans fat, high fructose and mercury poisoning, I formally request that the above be engraved on my headstone as an eternal "we told you so".