Wellness Update

By Mary Muchowski

We are coming up on the end of our four-year grant (in Sept.) from The California Wellness Foundation to conduct toxic awareness in Butte County. This spring we released two new television "commercials" that were aired in March, April and May. We are excited to be able to use this media, and if you missed them, you can view them on our website www.becnet.org by clicking on Alternatives to Toxics, then on the Media link, or on our Facebook site under the Video tab.

Our Alternative Cleaning Solutions workshops continue to be popular and we will be conducting many more this summer. If you know of any group or organization that would like a presentation on why you should, and how you can use safer cleaning products, please call Mary or Julia at 891- 6424. At the end of each presentation we let the participants make their own cleaning products. We supply all the ingredients and the containers! We also have an Alternative Lawn and Garden care presentation in the final stages of development.

We have been continuing our outreach education on the amount of mercury in locally caught fish. Many people in the Oroville area have heard something about mercury in local fish; however, they often do not know which fish are highest in mercury. Of the fish in the Feather River and Lake Oroville, trout, salmon and blue gill/sunfish are generally lower in mercury. Bass, catfish and pike minnow have higher mercury content. A notable exception is that Coho (kokenee or land-locked) salmon in Lake Oroville are higher in mercury than the Chinook salmon in the Feather River.

Mercury is found in the muscle (or flesh) of the fish, and thus is not removed if you remove the skin and fatty parts before eating (however, other contaminants such as PCBs and other fat-soluble toxins are removed by this process). Mercury and other contaminants bio-accumulate in animals, so animals at the top of the food web, such as humans and larger fish that eat other fish, can accrue dangerously high levels over time.

From the Summer 2010 issue of the Environmental News.