Amazon fish contaminated with toxic metals threaten riverine communities' health

For riverside communities along the Amazon, fish is not a menu choice—it is a lifeline. Millions of people in the Brazilian Amazon depend on fish as their primary source of protein, consuming it daily in quantities far above the national average. When we began fieldwork across five municipalities in western Pará, we knew this reality well. What the data then showed us was that this dietary dependence comes with a health cost that standard food safety frameworks are not designed to capture.