FINCH: THE MECCA PROJECT 



Table 1. — Coniinueci. 



' These data were derived by reviewing the commonly sold 

 forms of the species involved, available data on the yield of 

 edible portions from purchased forms, and amounts used in 

 standard recipes. For meals away from home, data on amounts 

 of fish served in various dishes was obtained from major 

 institutional caterers. All these figures are somewhat variable, 

 and the factors used represent best estimates of the overages 

 in each cose. 



A review was made of the defective records 

 in the survey, i.e., those with incomplete data. 

 It was decided that these might be compensated 

 in two ways. One would be to eliminate all 

 defective records. This would give a smaller 

 base but one which might be atypical since 

 more records were defective in some categories. 

 The second approach would be to include all 

 records and develop a recovery procedure for 

 these. It was decided to develop two data bases, 

 one using each procedure. If these compared 

 well, it would indicate the acceptability of both 

 treatments. A detailed description of the con- 

 sideration, the procedures used, and a com- 

 parison of results using the two data bases, 

 are shown in the Appendix. Both methods 

 gave comparable results, thus adding confidence 

 that the methods used were valid. Runs were 

 usually made using Data Base 1. 



microconstituent, in this case mercury, for 

 each family in turn and to display the distribu- 

 tion of these estimated intakes among families 

 and individuals. This is accomplished as follows: 



1. The input for each run is a set of micro- 

 constituent levels for each of the 52 kinds 

 offish. 



2. Using this set of levels, the program cal- 

 culates the estimated average microcon- 

 stituent intake of each family in micro- 

 grams per day (If) by aggregating the 

 intakes calculated for each kind of fish, 

 and prorating from the number of periods 

 reported (P) to 24 (1 yr, semimonthly) as 

 follows: 



' P 



W. X L. X 0.0777 



where: Wg = estimated total weight 

 (ounces) consumed of spe- 

 cies s. 



Lg = level of microconstituent 

 (ppm) in species s. 



The intake for each family is divided by 

 the number in the family to give individual 

 daily intake levels. 



The results from all families and indi- 

 viduals are ranked in intervals of 1 /jg/day. 

 The results are printed out in two forms. 

 One shows the number and percentage of 

 individuals and families falling into each 

 interval. The second is a histogram which 

 displays the percentage of individuals by 

 tenths falling into each interval. 

 The program also prints out the coded 

 identity of each of the families in the five 

 highest intake intervals occurring and 

 the level of their individual intakes. 

 In addition, the average daily intake for 

 all individuals is calculated and printed 

 out. 



Application of Data Bases 

 to Estimate Mercury Intakes 



The computer program is designed to use 

 the data base to estimate the intake of a 



Mercury Levels in Fish 



In order to apply methylmercury data to 

 the program, a review was made of analytical 

 results available for total mercury on different 



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