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NJDEP Updates Fish Consumption Advisories By Jared Eudell 
Fall is the best time of year to fish the Hackensack River for Striped bass, Bluefish, White perch and other game fish. Most recreational anglers know that eating these fish from local waters is a bad idea because of the high level of toxins in the fish. However, there are two large groups of people who still make the dangerous mistake of eating what they catch out of the Hackensack: people that don’t know about the dangers, and people that don’t care. On a recent patrol around the watershed, two gentlemen were found fishing on the Hackensack from Mill Creek Point in Secaucus on a Thursday afternoon. They had some idea that the fish were contaminated and had no intention of eating anything they might catch, but they thought that mercury was the worst culprit. They were completely unaware of the additional presence of dioxins and PCBs. The presence–and injurious effects–of these three chemical families are the impetus behind the State’s fish tissue research, a study that has been going on since the early 1980s, and subsequent outreach efforts. Because these toxins are ubiquitous and persistent (they don’t biodegrade) in the ecosystem, they are absorbed by and passed through the food chain. By the time a Striped bass is of edible size, it is too toxic for high-risk populations–infants, children, nursing mothers and women of child-bearing age. By the time a Blue-claw crab is of edible size, it is so toxic that no one–at-risk or not–should eat it–ever! Blue-claw crabs from the Hackensack River and Newark Bay Complex have absorbed enough poisons to increase a human being’s cancer risk 5,000 times. (This means that 5,000 people out of 100,000 will get cancer if they eat two crabs per year.) Acceptable risk is considered 1 in 100,000 people.
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