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Am I the only person not keen to eat Danish shellfish? The Baltic is heavily polluted by all sorts of heavy metals and persistent organic contaminants, and filter feeders are known to accumulate these substances.

In fact, most of the Baltic fish catch already ended up getting exported to Asia as fish meal because it is illegal to use them as feed or fertiliser in EU if the final product is intended for human consumption.

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They are not from the Baltic. It's the North Sea. More precisely Kattegat, Skagerak and along the western shore.

The western shore of Jutland may qualify as the North Sea but the other two regions definitely don't.

Morever, the top layer of the Kattegatt has a much lower salinity compared to the ocean due to significant outflow of warm brackish water from the Baltic, carrying all the pollutants to the North Sea through the Skagerrak.

To be fair, the situation has actually been improving since the late 90s with tighter regulation on effluents, however I'd rather wait another 10 year before this patch of sea clears up itself.

>The Baltic is heavily polluted by all sorts of heavy metals

Not like China's waters are any better.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25822200

Yes, more reasons to avoid seafood coming out of Asia. As I mentioned above, polluted feed from Europe is already adding to the problem.

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