The intersection of commerce and public health can be a dangerous place.

That was clear last week, when the state issued a warning that eating lobster tomalley could be hazardous to your health. The slimy green stuff, which serves as the lobster's liver and which some folks love to eat, has recently tested positive for high levels of the toxins caused by red tide algae. And those toxins can, in extreme cases, lead to respiratory failure and death.

But like we said, there's the problem of commerce getting all mixed up in what is essentially a public health issue. The same week, the lobster industry's marketing arm, the Lobster Promotion Council, issued a press release after the state gave its warning.

That release said, "Maine Confirms Safety of Maine Lobster Consump-tion."

Well, not quite.

State public health chief Dr. Dora Anne Mills stressed that eating lobster meat was safe. But she was very clear: eating tomalley wasn't.

The lobster industry has a right to be scared. In 2006, the state's lobster catch was more than 72 million pounds and worth close to $300 million. The industry supports more than 5,700 lobster fishermen as well as related businesses such as dealers, boat builders, restaurants, processors and outfitters. Anything that hurts lobster consumption, especially during the summer high season, will have a tangible effect on Maine's lobster industry and the people who are part of it.

That's probably why most people don't know that since 1994, the state has warned against eating lobster tomalley because it's high in dangerous, cancer-causing PCBs and dioxins.

"No one should eat it," wrote state toxicologist Dr. Andy Smith, in a brochure published by the state in 2001.

But you'd be hard-pressed to find that information in your daily rounds -- it's not posted in lobster shacks or over fish counters in the grocery store, it can't be found on the Web site of the Lobster Promotion Council, it isn't to be seen on the many Web sites of companies selling Maine lobster.

What the Lobster Promotion Council does say, on the "How-to" section of its Web site and in a brochure it provides for distribution by retail lobster vendors, is simply "discard the tomalley."

While that may satisfy some legal requirement to alert consumers, it's hardly evidence of a genuine attempt to let people know about the risks of the food they're eating.

In short, unless you're a well-informed consumer, you very well may not know about the long-established danger of eating tomalley, let alone the more recent warning from the state about its consumption.

Public health experts have recently been engaged in a discussion about the value of those types of fish consumption warnings. There's evidence, for example, that they may not stop people from eating the item that's bad for them.

Turns out, it's because people are often not aware of the warnings. That's an argument for making them louder and more high-profile.

But there's also an unintended and unfortunate consequence of the warnings, crystallized in the headline on this press release from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2005: "Study Finds Government Advisories on Fish Consumption and Mercury May Do More Harm Than Good."

That's because consumers aren't too good at making fine distinctions between seafood that's good for you (providing health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, for example) and seafood that's bad for you. So researchers found consumers may skip the fish altogether, losing potential health benefits, and turn to foods like cholesterol-filled hamburgers and fat-infused hotdogs that are demonstrably bad for their health.

While all that may be true, it's still no reason to withhold important information from the public that they can use to make decisions about what they should and shouldn't eat. And as far as we're concerned, by not requiring wide and prominent dissemination of the tomalley warning, the state is effectively denying the public crucial information.

The lobster industry won't do it by itself -- that's evident in its deceptive press release of last week.

And while in the short term, wide dissemination of the warning may cause some harm by depressing the market for lobster, that's nothing compared to what could happen if someone dies from toxic tomalley that they didn't know was dangerous.