Mercury levels are also quite high. But scientists say the levels in Deer Creek aren't usually a problem for swimming or drinking the water. The real threat comes from eating the fish.
"(Mercury) is a million times more concentrated -- or even 10 million times more concentrated -- in the fish than it is in the water. You'd have to drink literally thousands of liters of water to get the same amount of mercury as you'd get from eating one fish," says Charlie Alpers, with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Some of the mercury could be working its way into fish in Deer Creek, "but even more so, the bigger issue regionally is the amount of mercury that's in the particles moving downstream, " says Jacob Fleck with the USGS. "Most of the mercury is in the fine grain material, and that moves all the way to down to the Delta and San Francisco Bay."
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