Updated Mercury In Fish Advice Stalled In Health Department

Courtesy of Google.com

Courtesy of Google.com

The last update on mercury levels in fish was put out to the public in 2004. Even though the 2004 update was a milestone, it’s source of data was put together from research that was 20 years old.

Nearly 10 years has past since the last update, but it looks as though we are going to have to wait a little longer. Here is a link to the article in the Huffington Post-

-Mercury Update Stalled

Pandas and Intern fine after China Earthquake

Just wanted to let everyone know that the BiFengXia panda base and our intern Stephanie were both unhurt in the earthquake in Lushan, China (very close to Ya’An).  Here’s Stephanie’s blog reporting the entire experience:

Steph writes,
“Yesterday morning started out pretty normal as I got on the bus for the panda base Continue reading

Support for Sustainable Seafood- PDXSeafood

Image courtesy of cnn.com

Image courtesy of cnn.com

One of the key factors in establishing PDXSeafood, our sustainable seafood program, is the declining status of the worlds overfished oceans. I recently came across an article that was informative and worth a read. Click on the link below to access the article.

Overfished and under-protected: Oceans on the brink of catastrophic collapse, by Tom Levitt of CNN.com.

Surprising Mercury Concentrations in Pandas

IMG_9760Thanks to the Xinbin lab of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for analyzing our samples in record time. The results of the analysis completely surprised us. Every sample was nearly ten times lower than the World Health Organizations recommended limit.

This great news sparked us to take a further look as to why the levels are so low. At first glance, as was previously thought, the pandas are eating bamboo covered in deposited soot from a smog covered sky. You can rub your fingers over the bamboo and they come off black. What we discovered next explained the pandas clean bill of health.

I will reveal their secret in a future post as we get closer to writing up the results.