Iqaluit (Dec 06/04) - Women in Nunavut are being urged to continue eating country food despite recent warnings from Health Canada for pregnant and nursing women about mercury levels in fish and how that contaminant can get into breast milk.

"Country foods are absolutely the best food you can possibly get in the North," said Nunavut's assistant chief medical officer Dr. Geraldine Osbourne in a phone interview. "They are nutritionally superior to store food."

Shark, swordfish and fresh and frozen tuna were the fish named in the recent Health Canada report as being more likely to have heavy doses of mercury in them.

Mercury is often found in areas where there is coal burning and mining activity.

Osbourne says those fish aren't really common here in the North. Women in Nunavut should simply be more selective in the country food they eat if they want to guard against mercury.

"We advise women to eat country foods that are (known to be) low in contaminants such as caribou, char, muskox and seal meat," she said.

If you are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant, the department of health advises a woman to eat less fat from narwhal, beluga, walrus, seal and polar bear as mercury tends to build up more in the fat of those animals.

Mercury also concentrates in organs, so, for example, eat less seal liver.

"This is taken in the context of other behaviours, not to smoke while pregnant, to stop drinking alcohol," said Osbourne. "We do very much to promote breastfeeding."

Mercury absorbed from the maternal diet gets into the blood stream and from there gets into breast milk. But research done in Nunavut recently suggests effects of mercury that gets into breast milk are minimal, said Osbourne.

Eating Arctic char, which is low in contaminants, can actually protect you from other contaminants, Osbourne explained.

Fatty acids in char help to protect against bad effects of some contaminants like PCBs. Char also contains vitamin D and phosphorous.

"We still see cases of rickets here, so vitamin D is really important," said Osbourne.

Research shows the higher up the food chain you are, the more heavy metals like mercury concentrate.