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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Surgeon General.

Lasker:

How was he? Dr. Steinfeld.

Q:

I was very much impressed with him. He was talking. He was being quizzed on the recent discoveries of mercury content in various fish and so forth, and he talked about the magnitude of this problem as it's beginning to unfold. Then as an aftermath to that --

Lasker:

-- does he say that it's dangerous to eat fish?

Q:

He didn't say that. He merely said that according to current standards the content of mercury in some fish was above those standards, the safety standards. But he did outline in a general way the magnitude of this problem, the pollution factor which is increasing. Later on in the day I was seeing my doctors in town and I mentioned this fact to him and he said that he saw, in this developing problem, as it relates to pollution factors, he saw a parallel to what we witnessed earlier in the century in this country, the dangers that came to the worker because he was working with radium, etc., and this created a lot of man made diseases, and he sees in this current thing man made diseases which we have to face and solve.

Lasker:

But nobody knows what mercury does to you, do they? In these amounts.





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