4 times higher mercury level in hair of whaling town residents

SHINGU, Japan, May 9 Kyodo -
Residents of Taiji, a whaling town in Wakayama Prefecture, have been found to
have concentrations of methylmercury in their hair around four times or more
than the average of 14 other regions in Japan where cetaceans are rarely
consumed, the town office said Sunday.
Men in Taiji, where whale meat has been eaten traditionally, had concentrations
around 4.5 times the average while the level in women was about 4 times higher,
the town office and the National Institute for Minamata Disease in Kumamoto
Prefecture said.
The finding was based on a survey last summer using hair samples from 1,017
residents of Taiji, which were tested for methylmercury concentration. No
health effects from the high concentrations were detected in the survey.
An official of the Minamata institute said the survey's outcome ''suggests a
connection between mercury concentrations and eating cetaceans. We did not
observe health effects as a result of the methylmercury, but there were
residents with very high concentrations and we need to follow this up.''
The survey covered about one-third of Taiji's population and the town office
said it was the largest such survey it had ever conducted.
The average for male Taiji residents was 11.0 parts per million while that for
female residents was 6.63 ppm, much higher than the average of 2.47 ppm for men
and 1.64 ppm for women in the 14 other regions surveyed by the institute.
The maximum concentrations detected in the Taiji survey were 139 ppm for men
and 79.9 ppm for women.
A total of 32 people, or around 3 percent of the subjects in the survey, had
concentrations of at least 50 ppm -- the lowest level recognized by the World
Health Organization as having the potential to cause neurological damage.
People who said they had eaten whale or dolphin meat in the past month had
higher mercury concentrations than those who said they had not consumed such
meat during the period.
==Kyodo