Health Advisories & Outreach

Health Advisories & Outreach
​We continue to be involved in the creation and dissemination of a variety of environmental communication messages.  These include advisories and educational materials for refugees and New Americans, as well as the NGOs and government agencies that assist in adjusting to a new life in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual United States.

About Health Advisories:
Health advisories tell us what can happen when we are exposed to environmental contaminants. Health advisories are not laws. They cannot, for example, prevent us from eating fish containing high levels of mercury. What they can do is show us the information we need to make wise choices about our health. Women planning to have children, nursing mothers, and children up to about age 15 are at highest risk from environmental hazards. Health problems resulting from eating contaminated fish and wildlife may range from mild chronic discomforts to cancer and birth defects. Since everyone’s level of risk is affected by many things, and since there is no easy way to know exactly what might lead to serious medical problems, it is wise to be very cautious about the amount of wild fish and game we eat.

Because we use water to clean ourselves, our homes, and our places of business, over the years many dangerous substances have gotten into our lakes, ponds, and streams. These substances accumulate on and in the bottoms of these waters. Fish living in polluted waters absorb low levels of contaminants in many ways. Most of those contaminants build up in the fatty parts of the fish. Health advisories for fish tell us how to cut out the most dangerous parts of the fish. These advisories also tell us how much fish we can eat and still be safe. Some kinds of fish are more likely to be contaminated than others. Carp, for example, because they live and feed on or near the bottom, and thrive in polluted water, appear in New York state health advisories more often than any other fish.

Animals and birds also absorb dangerous substances from the environment. As with fish, the fat and organs of birds and other animals contain the highest levels of toxic elements.