Methylmercury

How might you reduce risks associated with contamination and human exposure by this chemical?

To enjoy the benefits of eating fish while minimizing exposure to mercury, you should:

Eat mainly types of fish low in mercury, and
Limit your consumption of types of fish with typically higher levels of mercury.

(EPA - Guidelines for Eating Fish that Contain Mercury)

Immediate solutions

As easy as stop eating poisoned fish, right?

Unfortunately, almost 40% of the worlds population relies on fish and seafood for nutrition [6]. And, unlike other persistent contaminants that also bioaccumulate, methylmercury partitions to the fish tissue rather than their lipid fraction, so cooking methods are not going to help to get rid of the mercury [Citation needed].

Constantly monitoring mercury concentrations in commercialized fish is a good option though; these data is used in better understanding the dynamics of mercury methylation, updating risk assessments and building awareness of dietary guidelines advising for fish species with lower mercury levels (e.g., FDA/EPA Fish Advice).

Short-term solutions

As easy as not dumping mercury everywhere, right?

Overall, mercury emissions to the atmosphere have dropped in the last years, but point sources still represent important pollution where water gets high mercury concentrations without having to go to the atmosphere first; these emissions have grown specially from gold mining activities that rely in mercury for cheap gold extraction. Unfortunately, gold mining is not an industrial activity merely driven by a gold market, nor controlled by legislation alone; the appeal of artisanal gold mining comes from its potential as a money laundering tool. Hence, the cheaper it can be done (i.e., using mercury), the better for the illegal enterprises funding the mining.

But I digress, the key point of this section is to acknowledge that every environmental problem can be traced back to a much more complex social problematic; scientific advancement should not grow unaware of that.

Couple notes from the Miami Herald about gold mining and its implications
(Not that much about methylmercury though)

Or more

Long term solutions

As easy as stopping climate change, right?

We saw before how MeHg exposure is not just related to Hg concentrations in the environment, but it follows complex biochemical relationships - from disturbances on aquatic ecosystems [6] to permafrost thawing [8]. This complexity involves the need of research that effectively ends up as a decision-making tools for implementing regulations that span over mercury emissions into other human activities disrupting aquatic ecosystems - and unsurprisingly addressing climate change is one of those.

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