Swedish dioxin salmon scandal

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Save Wild Salmon & Bristol Bay: Paul Greenberg

July 20, 2011

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Wild Alaskan salmon is one of the most sustainable and healthy fish you can find. But if we don’t act now, it may disappear forever. Critical breeding grounds for wild salmon are endangered by the proposed construction of America’s largest open pit copper and gold mine, deep in the heart of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

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Next year, developers plan to apply for permits for the construction of Pebble Mine. It’s not too late for us to stop them if we act now. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently considering requests from stakeholders to use its power under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay. Pebble Mine would cover 20 square miles in the Bristol Bay watershed, in a seismically active region, and require the construction of the world’s largest earthen dam for a 10 square mile waste containment pond. Up to 10 billion tons of toxic mine wastes could be produced. Any release of these wastes could cause irreparable damage to the Bristol Bay salmon runs.

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An Alaskan copper mine could destroy the world’s largest salmon run. here.

EPA: New Mine Threatens Half World’s Wild Sockeye Salmon: here.

From the BBC:

8 May 2013 Last updated at 16:57

Swedish salmon sales ‘breached EU ban’ over dioxins

Firms in Sweden have sold about 200 tonnes of Baltic salmon in Europe despite an EU ban targeting toxic chemicals in fish, officials say.

The ban does not apply to Baltic salmon sold to domestic consumers in Sweden, Finland and Latvia. But the sellers are required to give advice about safe limits for consumption, set by the EU.

Dioxins found in Baltic herring and salmon prompted the EU ban in 2002.

A French firm imported 103 tonnes of Swedish salmon, but no longer does so. …

Jan Sjoegren of Sweden’s National Food Agency told the BBC that Baltic salmon had also been exported illegally to Denmark and the Netherlands from Sweden.

The agency has alerted the European Commission, which deals with national food safety authorities.

A firm in Karlskrona has been reported to the Swedish customs authorities over the salmon exports, and a firm in Hammaroe is also being investigated, Mr Sjoegren said.

Dioxin hazard

The latest alert about Baltic salmon exports follows a horsemeat contamination scandal in the EU which affected many countries.

“We don’t think more salmon is being exported now, but because of the horsemeat scandal we are stepping up action on food fraud,” Mr Sjoegren said.

Sweden’s National Food Agency says the average intake of dioxins among adult Swedes is well below the “tolerable weekly intake” set by the EU.

Children and young women, it adds, should especially limit their consumption of wild Baltic fish because dioxins pose the most risk to babies and young children.

Dioxins spread by incineration and chemical pollution can accumulate in the body over years and can trigger cancer or reproductive abnormalities.

The European Food Safety Authority says that, on average, Baltic herring and wild Baltic salmon are respectively 3.5 and five times more contaminated with dioxins than non-Baltic herring and farmed salmon.