Eating Fish From THESE N.J. Places (Essex County) Can Get You Very, Very Sick

You’ve heard the jokes about New Jersey and its landscape of smokestacks.

You’ve also heard from public officials who boast about how that unfortunate part of N.J’s history is mostly gone, how much of the environmental pollution that gave the state a bad name has been mostly clearned up.

Well, there are still some areas of New Jersey where environmental pollution is no laughing matter. In fact, a series of stories published by WNYC and other publications show that the residual pollution in this state can still get you downright sick.

Indeed, New Jersey is home to one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the country, with more than 100 companies potentially responsible for dumping toxic waste in it for decades before that was outlawed in the early 1970s.

Eating any fish from the Passaic River can cause cancer, liver damage, birth defects and reproductive issues; yet WNYC shows, in its “New Jersey’s Dirty Little Secrets” series,” how there are people who still do it all the time. But it also shows what’s being done to protect people.

“I wash them, salt them, cover them in garlic, fry them,” Oswaldo Avad, fishing in the Passaic River where it meets the Newark Bay in New Jersey, told WNYC. “Or I make a soup.”

New Jersey also puts out a list of the waterways in the state where eating fish could be a problem. Here is information from its latest advisory, indicating which fish not to eat:

GENERAL POPULATION

• Blue Crab - Neware Bay, tidal Hackensack River, Arthur Kill, Kill Van Kill
• White Catfish - Hudson River

HIGH-RISH INDIVIDUALS (infants, children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and women of childbearing age)

• Striped bass, Bluefish - statewide estuarine and marine waters
• Striped Bass, White Catfish - Newark Bay, tidal Hackensack River, Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kill
• Striped Bass, American Eel and White Perch - Hudson River
• Weakfish, American Eel, White Perch - Raritan Bay and Raritan River
• Largemouth Bass, American Eel, Channel Catfish, White Catfish, Striped Bass, White Perch - Lower Delaware River
• White Perch, Channel Catfish - sections of Delaware River

So where does this fish end up? Does it go to the supermarket?

Some of the companies responsible for polluting the Passaic are funding a fish exchange program. Every Saturday between June and October, residents can bring their contaminated catch to a tent in Lyndhurst and swap it for clean, healthy tilapia being raised in a greenhouse in Newark, according to WNYC.

In 2015, none of their 300 tilapia reached harvest size, so the polluters handed out frozen tilapia fillets from Costco instead, even though they’re not sure how to dispose of the contaminated eel, carp, perch and crab they’ve collected, according to the report.

Byproducts from the manufacture of compounds like Agent Orange and hydraulic fluid were dumped in the Passaic, and 54 companies are potentially responsible, including Pfizer, Rubbermaid and Tiffany & Co. They have combined to form a group called, “The Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group,” according to WNYC.

Click here to find out more about how to handle fish that could be potentially contaminated.

Clich here to find out more about what fish from your area you can eat, and when.