State officials have released new guidelines for fish consumption in Crawford, Oscoda, and Kent counties. The information is being released early to help address concerns over contamination.
In an effort to address an emerging contaminant in fish called PFAS consumption guidelines have been released about a month earlier than usual. PFAS are a chemical often found in fabric protection and fire retardants.
The guidelines right now only apply to fish from Freska, Versluis and Margrethe Lakes and the Au Sable river.
Angela Minicuci is with the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We’ve been doing some fish testing and typically when we receive results of those tests we roll those into our annual update which we release in the spring prior to fishing season, but because there is so much attention to this issue and it really is a nationally emerging contaminant we wanted to get notification out sooner so we issued a release.”
Minicuci said the guidelines include recommended monthly servings of fish for everyone including children and pregnant or breastfeeding women.
A link to the guidelines is here.