The FDA recommended on Friday that pregnant women and children eat albacore tuna contaminated with "many times" the mercury the EPA recommends weekly. Tuna producers agree.

The advisory from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency comes after months of controversy and the discovery of high mercury levels in some of the most popular types of fish in the American diet. Although the recommendations have no binding force, they carry enormous weight as a guide to states, physicians, nutritionists and the public on how to best control mercury in the food supply.

Despite singling out albacore tuna as moderately high in mercury, the guidelines were praised by the canned-tuna industry for emphasizing the health benefits of eating fish. But environmental health advocacy organizations said the new guidelines don't go nearly far enough in warning consumers of the mercury danger.

After the release of the new advisory Friday, a nationally known mercury expert, Vas Aposhian, a University of Arizona professor of molecular and cellular biology, resigned from the FDA's Food Advisory Committee, saying the FDA ignored the committee's recommendations.

The advisory sets a weekly allowance on albacore tuna at 6 ounces -- or roughly one standard-size can -- for those considered sensitive to mercury, including children, pregnant and nursing women, or any woman who may become pregnant.

That amount of white albacore canned tuna is "dangerous to the health of 99 percent of U.S. pregnant women and their unborn children,'' said Aposhian, a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed and approved the EPA's mercury safety guideline. The FDA's Food Safety Group fails to meet the high standard of its Therapeutic Drug Approval Group, he said.

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Children are cautioned to eat smaller portions than adults, but no specific amounts were included in the guidelines. Men were offered no specific advice at all, other than to eat a balanced diet of fish.

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Government test results have found that albacore tuna had mercury levels three times higher than the chunk light tuna. The advisories that resulted from those findings represent "a conservative approach," Crawford said.

The U.S. Tuna Foundation, which represents StarKist, Chicken of the Sea and other canned tuna producers, issued a statement applauding the FDA for taking care to "affirm the nutritional benefits of seafood'' and for emphasizing that "consumption advice is not necessary for the general population."

Dozens of consumer, health and environmental groups have been pressuring the government to adopt tougher regulations on mercury in fish as well as on mercury emissions from power plants.

Critics charged that albacore mercury levels are so high that the 6-ounce recommended weekly allowance would expose fetuses, infants, toddlers and growing young people to levels many times higher than the EPA's safety guideline.

"If American women follow the FDA's advice and eat a can of albacore tuna a week, a bad situation will be made far, far worse,'' said Richard Wiles, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group in Washington. He said the advisory "flies in the face of all scientific understanding of the hazards of mercury to children."

Fish contaminated in oceans and lakes are the main source of mercury in the human diet. The primary sources are coal-fired power plants, incinerators and mines. Mercury can cause irreversible damage to the developing central nervous system. Mothers eating mercury-contaminated fish may expose their offspring to chronic, low doses resulting in lowered IQ, abnormal muscle tone and loss of motor function, among other difficulties.

Using 1999-2000 data, EPA researchers recently analyzed blood mercury concentrations in women to estimate how many newborns might have been exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in the womb. They found that about 630,000 newborns -- or more than 15 percent of the total born -- may have been exposed before birth to mercury at levels that are considered to increase risk of adverse neurological developmental effects.

Parenthetically (no pun intended), if you would prefer not to give your children heavy metal poisoning, the San Francisco Chronicle has provided a helpful chart showing which fish are least likely to be contaminated.

Dr. Aposhian is not the first scientist who has left the service of Our Fearless Leader over the mercury issue. The EPA fired the last group.

For nearly 21 months, a government task force steadily moved toward recommending rules that within three years would force every coal-fired power plant in the country to reduce emissions of mercury, which can cause neurological and developmental damage to humans.

The Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored working group had a well-regarded mix of utility industry representatives, state air quality officials and environmentalists. Without settling on specific emission reductions, the panel agreed that all 1,100 of the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants must use the "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) to reduce mercury and other hazardous pollutants.

But in April, the EPA abruptly dismantled the panel. John A. Paul, its co-chairman, said members were given no clue why their work was halted -- that is, until late last month, when the Bush administration revealed it was taking an entirely different approach, using a more flexible portion of the Clean Air Act.

The new approach would still cost the industry billions of dollars to meet long-term goals. But it was far cheaper and less onerous than the MACT approach that most experts had assumed the EPA was developing to meet a court-imposed deadline of Dec. 15.

The administration's alternative plan would technically downgrade the danger of mercury pollution; grant utility companies 10 more years to develop and install new anti-pollution equipment; and launch a cap-and-trade system that would allow utilities to buy emissions "credits" from lesser-polluting companies to meet an overall industry target, or cap, without having to install new scrubbers or anti-pollution equipment on every plant.

The administration's new plan involved allowing industry to pay far less than the cost of cleaning up emissions for the privilege of giving children irreversible neurological and developmental damage

The Bush administration on Wednesday defended a proposal to reduce mercury emissions by allowing power plants to trade emission credits. Critics say that could create mercury "hot spots" still harmful to public health.

The draft proposal would differ radically from the one offered by the Clinton administration three years ago, which would regulate mercury as a toxic substance through the use of "maximum achievable technology" at each of nearly 500 coal-fired power plants.

The latest EPA proposal would essentially cap mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants nationwide at 34 tons a year by 2010, a reduction of 30 percent from current levels, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

Emissions would be cut to 15 tons a 70 percent reduction by 2018.

The new plan would give each plant an emissions allowance and "allow utilities to purchase or sell allowances and adjust their emissions accordingly," according to the draft.

That would mean some plants might have to make only modest reductions, if any, if they choose to buy credits instead of adding pollution controls.

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We believe a tough, mandatory cap with trading offers promise for greater reductions in mercury emissions over a longer period because of improvements in technology and innovation that would follow."

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Mercury is a persistent substance that affects the nervous system and is especially dangerous for pregnant women and children. Mercury concentrations in fish have prompted at least 43 states to issue fish consumption advisories. Although 40 percent of mercury emissions come from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants, those emissions have never been regulated as a pollutant.

Jeffrey Holmstead, head of EPA's air office, said a cap-and-trade approach to regulating mercury is "our favored approach because it gets us greater (emission) reductions" than relying on installation of specific technology at each plant.

He said the maximum technology approach has not been ruled out and would still be offered for public comment as the regulation moves toward completion.

Environmentalists and health advocates argue that the proposal to let companies trade emissions allowances might be desirable in dealing with certain types of pollution, such as smog-causing ozone or sulfur-producing acid rain, but it is not in the case of mercury.

William Becker, executive director of the association that represents state air pollution officials, said the latest proposal would delay mercury regulation three years until 2010, while the original one would have required pollution controls at plants by 2007.

"They are rescinding (a policy) that concluded mercury from utilities needs to be regulated ... and replacing it with a substitute that ... allows for trading between facilities without protecting local adverse impacts," said Becker.

Mercury contamination has been a growing problem, especially among those who rely on subsistence fishing in contaminated waters.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns "that one in 12 women of childbearing age carry levels of mercury in their bodies that are unsafe for a developing fetus," said Michael McCally, a clinical professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and president-elect of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. He said the EPA draft proposal "ignores the devastating health effects of mercury for millions of American children."

Mr. McLellan did not make clear what incentive industry would have to develop new technologies to solve a problem they patently dont care about, and which the Bush administration proposes to absolve them from solving.

a few other thoughts about mercury contamination and the public and Our Fearless Leader:

Leaving aside the emissions, in the last year in which data was released, which was, surprise!, 2ooo, industry has misplaced 65 tons of mercury used in manufacturing

The regulations in question were written by lobbyists for industry. EPA scientists were ordered not to conduct a scientific review

The EPA acknowledges that as written, their rules would not even accomplish the greatly reduced goals they set for themselves, and promise a scientific review at some point in the future, probably after the presidential election, when a swing state complains.

So. In the service of industry, Our Fearless Leader's regulators have decided that it's OK for you and any small humans, unborn or born, you may have lying around to be poisoned by toxic metals, but only a little bit for now. After you reward them for their stewardship by giving them four more unsupervised years in office, they promise to give prayerful consideration to the burning open question of what matters to them more: our lives or their contributors.

Sounds like a pretty safe bet to me, if you're a contributor.

If you're a mere citizen, with healthcare and services for disabled children going away, maybe not so much.