Pregnant women may want to put fish back on their grocery lists. According to a study in the latest issue of The Lancet, the British medical journal, the nutritional benefits of seafood outweigh any toxic effects of trace contaminants like mercury. That's big news because many pregnant women are still following a 2004 advisory from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which warned them to avoid high-mercury fish (shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish) and to eat no more than 12 ounces of low-mercury seafood (shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, catfish) each week because of potentially harmful effects on the developing brain of the fetus. The new Lancet study suggests that advising pregnant women to limit their consumption of seafood could actually be detrimental to their children.
The study's authors looked at the behavior, fine motor skills and IQ's of the offspring of 11,875 British women who had earlier assessed their seafood consumption at 32 weeks gestation. Researchers found that the children of women who ate less than 12 ounces of seafood a week had an increased risk of poor social development and low verbal IQ. Meanwhile, women who ate more than 12 ounces of seafood a week while pregnant saw beneficial effects on their children's development. Yikes—tuna sandwiches for everyone? NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen spoke with Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the lead author of the study. Excerpts:
