A call for changes in the Food and Drug Administration's seafood-testing procedure in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not news to activists and independent scientists, many of whom have been lobbying national authorities for months over the protocols.
"I've been requesting over and over that we redo the calculations and adapt to the dietary habits of the people on the coast," said chemist Wilma Subra, president of Subra Co., a New Iberia lab and environmental consulting firm. The company has been testing all types of seafood as well as the sediment in the aftermath of the spill.
"The FDA protocol is absolutely 100 percent inadequate," said Peter Brabeck, an environmental monitor for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. "No question about it."
The Natural Resources Defense Council released a nonscientific survey last week showing that Gulf residents eat far more seafood than the amounts used by the FDA, Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to determine the level of concern over potentially cancer-causing contaminants in seafood as a result of the BP oil spill.
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