The NYT reports that the fish being served in their fair city has toxic levels of mercury:

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market. The sushi was bought by The New York Times in October.

“No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks,” said Dr. Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J.

Yikes. Perhaps most notable is that the restaurant owners had no idea they were serving toxic fish. Will they test at the market? Will fish markets test before selling? Where will the controls emerge? What if restaurant guides like Zagat started to include toxicity tests in their reviews and award cleanliness? Or will consumers be expected to carry a toxicity test when they eat out or even shop at the grocery?

Will someone please market a sushi preparedness kit? A pair of organic-based chopsticks, chemical free soy sauce, natural wasabi, and a box that you can drop your food into to assess mercury levels before you put it into your mouth. Ok, just kidding. But you get the idea.

Update: Apparently Greenpeace offers a $25 mercury do-it-yourself test kit.

The results are in, and the findings are worse than we anticipated: one in five women of childbearing age that were tested have mercury levels exceeding the EPA’s recommended limit.

“In the samples we analyzed, the greatest single factor influencing mercury exposure was the frequency of fish consumption,” said Dr. Steve Patch, Co-director of EQI and co-author of the report. “We saw a direct relationship between people’s mercury levels and the amount of store-bought fish, canned tuna fish or locally caught fish people consumed.”

Yikes again. Is this Department of Homeland Security material? Or will this be left up to the EPA to sort out?