People actually eat fish from the Hudson!?

I run down the Hudson a lot, and I am utterly amazed by people who fish there. It just seems like a unpleasant place to fish. But I had no idea that people were actually eating what they caught:

For years, state health officials have warned that because of mercury and PCB contamination, women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not eat any fish from the Hudson River, and other people should do so only sparingly. Studies and surveys have nonetheless found that many people are either unaware of those warnings or, like Mr. Tejada, simply ignore them.

But scientists are finding that the consequences for those who turn a blind eye are hard to overlook. An examination of 124 anglers at a half-dozen piers and fishing clubs along the lower Hudson River found that those who reported eating locally caught fish -- about 80 percent of the group -- had about twice as much mercury in their blood as the others, according to a recently released study.

That report is the first to document the levels of mercury in anglers who regularly get their meals from the lower Hudson, which the health department defines as south from the Rip Van Winkle Bridge near the town of Catskill. The study found that those who did so had an average of 2.2 nanograms per milliliter of mercury in their systems. That level is below the safe baseline of 5.8 nanograms per milliliter recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency, but still worrisome to scientists who say the health effects of long-term exposure to those levels of mercury are not well understood.

The report, by a team of researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was published in the June issue of the journal Environmental Research.

You would think having just pulled an animal out of a rotting cesspool would be sufficient to disincline people from devouring it, but I guess you would be wrong.