A Tragic Lack of Perspective on Mercury Hair Analysis

It’s a tossup as to who made me more cranky last week – Greenpeace or The Commons Blog. From Sitemeter, I found I was getting some hits from a link from The Commons Blog. I was glad for the traffic, even if they misquoted me (it’s not like you’re reading James Wolcott or anything here).

What drew me to The Commons Blog (maybe I should put an article in front of my title – An Impact Analysis – what do you think?), other than its anti-environmentalist rantings are a tad more thoughtful than, say Greenie Watch, was a critique of Greenpeace’s hair testing program for mercury:

Does anyone know the current state of hair sample testing for mercury? It would appear that Greenpeace is still running its nationwide campaign to encourage people to pay $25 for a mercury hair testing kit.

According to a WebMd story from a few years back, there are serious concerns about how accurate hair sampling is as a testing method. So I am curious whether hair sampling has improved its reputation or whether the interim results from Greenpeace should be considered questionable.

My guess is that $25 might be better spent as part of a mammagram, prostate exam, or even a dentist appointment.

Besides purchasing a kit, Greenpeace recommends that you host a mercury testing house party. Who's in the house!!!?? Merc- merc. Who's in the house? Mercury!!!

Those folks at Greenpeace know how to have a good time, but they fail to leave enough instructions on how to really whoop it up. When I throw my mercury testing parties, I like to make it a theme night, so be sure to have something from one of the Mercury Record labels playing in the background. For instance, Bob Marley or Bon Jovi as artists of Island Records, a Mercury label, really spice things up. Then, I like to serve lots of fish. Finally, everybody takes a shower using Aveda Products, in honor of the company's sponsorship of the Greenpeace hair testing project. If you aren't having fun by that point, well, down a few bottles of Mercury Rising and call me in the morning.

I checked out this eye-opening WebMD story. It turns out that WebMD interviewed some contract toxicologist with the California Department of Health Services and Stephen Barrett (noted nutritional quackbuster) about hair testing. Hair testing is marketed by quack vendors for “diagnosing” mineral deficiencies in general as a prelude to hawking unneeded supplements. Use of hair analysis for monitoring toxic substances such as lead and mercury pretty much was mentioned in only in passing. If you were looking for information to protect yourself against hair-testing nutritional quacks, this article for you. If you were looking to become more informed about hair analysis for monitoring potential exposure to heavy metals, you would have been tragically disappointed. So much for The Commons Blog’s scholarship (did I mention to you that they misquoted me? And that they called me an environmentalist, too?).

On to Greenpeace. They’ve been sponsoring a nationwide testing program for mercury levels in hair as a political statement about the regulation, or lack thereof, of emissions from coal-fired power plants. I have no problems with political statements, but I wonder about the legitimacy of using environmental data in the service of political statements. For environmental data to have any meaning, the collection of it should be designed to answer questions, make decisions or to better inform a problem; in other words, its collection should be guided by data quality objectives (take it easy, I’m not one of them).

So, The Commons Blog: while I may question the wisdom of Greenpeace using exposure data to generate publicity, analysis of hair is considered a reliable index of methyl mercury exposure in humans (ATSDR sponsored a symposium on hair analysis for exposure assessment in 2001).

Episodes such as this are a reminder as to why I decided to start writing this blog.