SEAFOOD SAFETY

When my wife became pregnant with twins, one of my duties was to go to the grocery store each week and buy what we considered to be a safe amount of fish. As nervous first-time parents, we kept up on the latest health news and had learned that mercury in seafood can harm developing fetuses. Pregnant women and other high-risk groups were advised to limit their fish consumption.

I would buy small pieces of salmon and carefully weigh the deli tuna. After a few weeks, I wondered, "How in the heck did it get to the point where we can eat only a limited amount of fish each week?"

I also wondered whether mercury might make a good investigative project. But where to start? The topic was immense, and much had already been written about the hazards of the toxic metal.

Yet, little had been written about the risks on your dinner plate. James O'Shea, the Tribune's managing editor, and George Papajohn, associate managing editor for projects, proposed that the newspaper buy samples of popular fish in Chicago supermarkets and have them tested for mercury.

The idea proved to be a good one. Conducting our own tests not only gave us a sure-fire public service story, but it opened up several avenues of reporting. For instance, we learned that hardly anyone - including federal regulators responsible for seafood safety - had tested store-bought fish for mercury.

Random samples

I teamed up on the project with Tribune environmental reporter Michael Hawthorne, who had written extensively about mercury. After an eight-month investigation, a three-part series titled "The Mercury Menace" was published on Dec.11-13.

The series showed how supermarkets are routinely selling seafood highly contaminated with mercury, which can cause learning disabilities in children and neurological problems in adults. The series also documented the hidden risks of canned tuna and decades of regulatory failure.

The articles prompted action in Chicago, the state of Illinois, on Capitol Hill and even in Canada.

Our test of the fish was the guts of our story. Hawthorne and I wanted the study to be as scientific as possible. Instead of just buying a handful of fish at the nearest grocery, we studied the methodology of similar research and called experts for advice.

In the end, we decided to test 18 samples each of nine kinds of seafood. We picked extremely popular fish, such as tuna and salmon, but we also wanted to check fish rarely or never tested, such as walleye and gourmet canned tuna.

We also decided to randomly select the stores we would visit. A random sample would remove any biases we might have, and the results of our testing would be representative of the entire Chicago area.

But conducting the random sample was tricky. We needed a complete list of Chicago-area stores, which wasn't readily available from public records or telephone books.

So we paid W3 Data, a company that compiles information from phone directories, about $300 to generate a list of all groceries, supermarkets and fish markets that fall within the six telephone area codes in and around Chicago.

We then used a random-number generator function in Microsoft Excel to select our 18 stores, which ranged from sprawling supermarkets in the affluent suburbs to mom-and-pop fish markets on the city's South Side.

Over the next two weeks, we battled Chicago traffic and collected the samples. We placed them in Ziploc bags, packed them in ice and shipped them overnight to Rutgers University in New Jersey. There, a lab experienced in mercury analysis conducted the actual tests.

In all, we tested 162 samples, making it one of the nation's most comprehensive studies of mercury in commercial fish. Each sample cost $45 to test. Adding in shipping and the price of the fish, the study cost about $9,000.

We believe the results were worth it. We found that much of the seafood was so tainted that regulators could have confiscated it - if only they were looking.

The Food and Drug Administration does not routinely inspect fish for mercury - not in ports, processing plants or supermarkets. In the rare instances when the FDA does check fish - usually in supermarkets - the agency does not seize high-mercury seafood that violates U.S. limits.

To document the PDA's lack of testing and its seeming unwillingness to enforce its own rules, Hawthorne and I drew upon court, industry and federal records. Some were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests; others were available on an FDA Web site, www.cfsan.fda.gov/ seafoodl.html.

We also conducted dozens of interviews. One canned tuna executive revealed that the industry often uses a high-mercury tuna species, yellowfin, to make millions of cans of light tuna, a product the government specifically recommends as a low-mercury choice.

Discovering this helped convince us to expand our series from two parts to three. And even though our canned tuna story ran on the third day, it received more hits on our Web site than the other two days combined.

Bottom feeders

The Web package, www.chicagotribune.com/ mercury, was overseen by Tribune online producer Danielle Gordon, who, from the outset, attended our mercury meetings. She helped devise an interactive "mercury calculator" to show readers how much fish they or their children can safely eat. The Web site also included other interactive graphics, a video interview with Hawthorne and photos by the Tribune's Chuck Berman.

Helping edit the series were Kaarin Tisue. an assistant metro editor, and Flynn McRoberts. the deputy projects editor who pulled double duty: He was technically on leave caring for his newborn son.

Reaction to "The Mercury Menace" was immense. Hawthorne and I received several hundred e-mails, calls or letters, and the series was featured on the Today Show.

The FDA announced it would investigate canned tuna; the U.S. Department of Agriculture vowed to correct its highly touted food pyramid to include mercury warnings: Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) called for regulatory reforms, and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed dramatic cuts in mercury emissions in the state.

Because the Tribune found high mercury levels in Canadian walleye, the Canadian fishing industry announced that, for the first time, it would conduct widespread testing of a variety of fish caught in the Great Lakes and sold in U.S. supermarkets.

Still, not everyone embraced the series.

The U.S. Tuna Foundation, a lobbying group for canned tuna producers, issued press releases saying that mercury in tuna was harmless.

The industry-financed Center for Consumer Freedom took out a full-page ad in the Tribune and gave us its mock "Bottom Feeders" award for "whipping up needless fears about mercury in fish."

All of the reaction taught us an important lesson: Just because other reporters have written about a topic doesn't mean you can't make a difference and discover new paths in familiar territory.

We also learned that conducting your own study isn't difficult. Numerous labs can test for pollutants, and for a couple hundred dollars, you can check several samples. If you find something, all kinds of questions are raised: How bad is the problem? Who's responsible? Who's affected?

Labs also can do DNA testing on food (about $150 per sample) to determine whether there is more to your meal than meets the eye. For example, is that expensive fillet of walleye you bought for dinner tonight really walleye?