The consumer can reduce exposure to mercury by eating fish in accordance with general dietary recommendations: at least twice a week, varying the different species of fish. The intake of methylmercury from predatory fish, especially from pike, caught in inland waters and also from pike caught in the sea may be higher than ordinary levels. The older the fish, the more contaminants such as mercury it has accumulated. For this reason, pike and predatory fish in inland waters are included in the Finnish Food Authority Guidelines on the safe consumption of fish: Children, adolescents, and women of childbearing potential should eat pike caught in lakes or the sea only 1-2 times a month. Pregnant and nursing women should not eat pike at all because of the mercury contained in it. Also people who daily eat fish caught in inland waters are recommended to reduce the consumption of other predatory fish that accumulate mercury (large perch, pike-perch and burbot).
Traditional Asian herbal medicines have been reported to occasionally contain even dangerously high levels of mercury. The mercury exposure of users of such products may be much higher than that obtained from food.