Initial assessment of mercury contamination in Anguillian fish

By Caitlin Rogers, Marissa DiGregorio, Jordan Borash, Gagandeep Singh, Atish Patel and Neha Jain Medicine is a service profession and SJSM students learn to care for the health of an individual patient as well as for the public health. Community benefits the most from the prevention. But each community has its specificities and SJSM students learn how to take into account those specificities in each step: preliminary research, risk evaluation, planning…before executing preventive measures in collaboration with local authorities. And talking about the prevention – everything probably starts with the food. What foods you expect to enjoy on the Carribean island? SJSM students started with the assessment of the heavy metal contamination in fish and mercury is, of course, first on the list for several reasons: because fish is by far the most significant source of ingestion-related mercury exposure (and not only on the islands); because mercury in any form is poisonous and because nearly all fish contain traces of mercury. Are the levels of mercury in fish in Anguilla such that they can affect neurologic, gastrointestinal, renal and other organ systems – or is it safe to eat fish in Anguilla? The answers are reported in detail to the local authorities and to you in brief: