Pollution controls have seen mercury emissions plummet - but levels in tuna have remained stable.
Levels of mercury persist in tuna, decades after pollution controls were introduced to limit emissions, scientists say.
And humans are then exposed to the element when they eat the fish, one of the most widely consumed around the world.Mercury poses a particular threat to unborn babies and small children but has also been linked to cardiovascular disease in adults. And to see if these actions had had an impact on mercury levels in tuna, researchers examined data from nearly 3,000 tuna muscle samples, from fish captured in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, including skipjack, bigeye and yellowfin, which together account for 94% of global tuna catches.
Mercury levels in tuna had remained constant between 1971 and 2022, the scientists found, apart from an increase in the north-western Pacific, in the late 1990s, linked to growing mercury emissions in Asia, sparked by rising coal consumption for energy.The constant levels may be caused by emissions many decades or centuries ago, the researchers said.
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