Facts About Salmon and PCBs

Over the past few days, newspapers in both Canada and the U.S. have been passing along the results of a study that claims that killer whales living off the coasts of Washington state and British Columbia are slowly being poisoned by PCBs carried by wild salmon stocks in the region. Though the study obviously doesn't refer to the farmed Atlantic salmon produced by facilities in Chile and British Columbia, the folks at SOTA thought it was important to put some facts into play that activists often obscure when it comes to this issue.

Though the use of PCBs has been banned since the 1970s, they still persist in the food chain to this day, though at steadily decreasing levels. But as the chart from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sourced from the U.S. FDA shows, the level of PCBs in salmon found in supermarket seafood sections and served in restaurants is lower than you find in a staple like salted butter or other common dinnertime fare like meatloaf, chicken breast and even brown gravy. Please keep this in mind whenever you hear media reports about this issue.