A number of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists will present research at the
Eighth International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant starting this
weekend at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison.
Here is a preview of some newsworthy presentations:
– Fish Advisories in Context: Tuesday, Aug. 8, 4:40 p.m., Ballroom C: A UW-Madison
researcher has found that fish toxicity notices in Wisconsin are often ineffective
and largely fail to inform consumers about the dangers of mercury-contaminated fish.
Maria Powell, a research associate at UW-Madison’s Lafollette School of Public
Affairs, explored fishing cultures among African-American and European fishermen in
Milwaukee and Cleveland. Powell looked primarily at how socioeconomic, physical and
cultural factors might be influencing how fishermen perceive public notices about
fish health.
The researcher found varying levels of trust with regards to the notices. Also,
pro-fishing marketing and media coverage often overwhelms the coverage of the fish
advisories, deepening confusion in the community.
Powell discovered the situation is even worse within the state’s Hmong populations,
which barely receive notices to start with. Additionally, myriad social, cultural
and technological constraints bar Hmong community members from accessing the few
translated notices that are available.
Powell believes fish-contamination notices could be have more impact with increased
funding for their creation, improved communications with uninformed communities and
better media coverage of fish contamination issues.
– Attacking mercury through the food chain: Tuesday, Aug. 8, 10 a.m., Grand Terrace:
To address the problem of mercury contamination in fish, a UW-Madison scientist is
hunting for the microorganisms that help mercury slip in to aquatic food chains.
Geo-microbiologist Eva Sedo is focusing the search on members of a bacterial family
known as the “sulfate-reducing bacteria” group. Researchers know that many
sulfate-reducing bacterial species can produce methylmercury – the form of mercury
most likely to contaminate fish – but it’s still unclear which species produce the
greatest amounts of the toxin.
Sedo says strategies to prevent mercury contamination will be limited unless
scientists gain a deeper understanding of the sulfate-reducing bacterial community.
She hopes to further that understanding by studying organisms in the Florida
Everglades and in northwestern Ontario, Canada. Sedo has collected dozens of
sulfate-reducing species from those sites to gauge how much methylmercury each is
able to produce.
