Site-Specific Meal Advice for Tested Lakes and Rivers

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and the Minnesota Department of Health collaborate in producing the fish consumption advisory. Each year, the DNR collects fish from lakes and rivers for testing. Minnesota has around 6,000 fishable lakes. Fish from over 1,000 lakes and streams in Minnesota have been tested for contaminants.

All waters from which fish have been tested are listed in the tables below. The waters that have been tested are not necessarily more contaminated than those not tested. Waters are selected for sampling where angling is popular, where there is a known or suspected pollution source, or where fish contaminant trends are being tracked. Mercury is found in most fish tested from Minnesota lakes. PCBs are found mainly in Lake Superior and major rivers such as the Mississippi River. These guidelines are based on the contaminant level measured in fillets.

As part of an ongoing investigation into environmental contamination from perfluorochemicals (PFCs), fish from the Mississippi River, the St. Croix River, and some metro area lakes have been tested for PFCs. Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), one chemical in the PFC group, has been measured in fillets of several species of fish from the Mississippi River and metro lakes. MDH has site-specific consumption guidelines for fish from these waters (see tables below). MDH, MPCA, and DNR continue to sample additional waters and fish for PFCs.

Consumption Advice for Bodies of Water Where Fish have been Tested:

Lakes - Fish Consumption Guidelines

Pregnant Women, Women who may become pregnant, and Children under age 15 (PDF 537KB/152 pages)

General Population - Men and Women not planning to be pregnant (PDF 472KB/147 pages)

Rivers - Fish Consumption Guidelines

Pregnant Women, Women who may become pregnant, and Children under age 15 (PDF 64KB/15 pages)

General Population - Men and Women not planning to be pregnant (PDF 66KB/15 pages)

Lake Superior - Fish Consumption Guidelines

For Everyone 

List of waters where fish have been tested for PFOS.

NOTE:
The Fish Consumption Guidelines listed above for lakes and rivers are Adobe Acrobat PDF files, except for the advice for Lake Superior. The lake files are large documents (130 pages). If you plan on referring to the Guidelines frequently, you may find it more efficient to download the files to your hard drive so you can refer to them without connecting to the Internet.

To download any of the Guidelines, right-click on the link and select either "Save Link As" or "Save Target As," depending on your browser. Select a location on your hard drive (drive C:) where you want to save the file. In the future you can view the document by simply double-clicking on the file name.

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For more information about this page, please contact the Fish Advisory Program coordinator at patricia.mccann@state.mn.us or 651-201-4911.