Asians Get Warning on Seafood : Immigrants Learn of Seasonal Threat From Shellfish

Word carries swiftly through the Southeast Asian community grapevine, said Beverley Yip, director of the Union of Pan-Asian Concerns. For that reason, the county has worked with the leaders of that community to warn the people that some food that they gathered and ate safely in their homeland can be poisonous in their new country.

And for the most part, the network of Indochinese agencies has effectively educated its population, since there hasn’t been a poisoning from gathered foods since March, 1982, when five members of a Laotian family suffered liver damage after eating poisonous wild mushrooms.

So it is with little fanfare in the Indochinese community that the County Department of Social Services declares the annual seven-month quarantine on the harvesting of mussels and other shellfish in San Diego County.

For those people, the quarantine has become common knowledge. Even the editor of San Diego’s Vietnamese newsletter, Kien Trang, said it has been at least two years since he has printed a warning about the quarantine.

“Everyone knows about it now, and the new ones hear from other people,” he said.

It wasn’t until five years ago, when there was an influx of Southeast Asian refugees, that the county took special efforts to inform residents that the shellfish, which they safely harvested year-round in their homeland waters, is poisonous during the warmer, summer months off California’s coastline.

This year, flyers about the quarantine--which specifically applies to mussels, native rock scallops and the dark meat of all clams--have been sent to 73 Indochinese organizations and doctors. The county has also posted warnings in several languages in coastal areas where the mussels are found, said Dr. Donald Ramras, the county’s chief health officer.

In California’s waters, a phenomenon occurs during the warmer months where a tiny toxic organism, Gonyaulux catanella , which is eaten by these shellfish, multiplies rapidly, causing a high concentration of the poison in the digestive glands and muscle tissue of the shellfish.

“The problem for us is that for these people this poison in the shellfish rarely occurs in the waters off their former homelands,” Ramras said.

At the Indochinese Family Planning Outreach and Education Project in Linda Vista, doctors have posted the warning and have informed patients individually, said clinic director Linda Hill.

“We have not had any problems, yet, but we are considering informing people through the ESL (English as a second language) programs or through our community outreach program,” Hill said.

“They are familiar with the quarantine. the leaders know and they disseminate the information to the people,” said Yip.

If poisonous shellfish are ingested, symptoms first include tingling and numbness of the lips, tongue and fingers, after which there is a disruption of balance and lack of muscle coordination, Ramras said.

As the poison attacks the body, speech becomes slurred, with the possibility of complete muscular paralysis. Cooking the shellfish will not neutralize the poison, Ramras said.

Although this year there have not been any reported deaths from paralytic shellfish poisoning in San Diego County, 98 cases were reported in Marin and Sonoma counties in 1980, Ramras said.

The quarantine does not apply to shellfish sold commercially in markets and restaurants, or to abalone, crab and shrimp, he said.