All compounds of mercury are poisonous and damage tissue by coagulating proteins and inactivating enzymes — by causing birth defects, brain damage, and blindness. In water, mercury is ultimately converted into soluble methyl mercury compounds, which are picked up by algae and plankton, which are eaten by little fish, which are eaten by larger fish -- which are then eaten by man (biological concentration). If fish die without being eaten, bacterial decomposition puts the mercury back into the cycle again, and again, and again.
A recent study has concluded that most of the mercury in the waters of the Everglades comes from thousands of miles away. Mercury poisoning is a global problem: mercury warnings to fishermen have been issued for fresh waters in over 40 of the United States, thousands of lakes in Canada, all of Scandinavia and much of Europe and Asia. An elemental poison can not be gotten rid of by simply running it around the food chain. Mercury is one of the heavy metals that causes dangerous inflammation in body tissues.
April 5, 2003
The Food and Drug Administration has begun using the Environmental Protection Agency's much lower the 'safe' level for mercury in the human body, an official of the food and drug agency said this week.
Before the change, the F.D.A. guidelines set a safe level that was four times as high as that of the environmental agency's standard.
"The F.D.A. is basing its advisory on the E.P.A.'s reference dose," Dr. David Acheson, the newly appointed chief medical officer in the F.D.A.'s science office, said in an interview first reported in The Mobile Register. "Are we formally endorsing it? I'm not aware, but we are certainly using it and pay attention to it."
A paper in the current issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association detailed the new position.
"This is really a landmark paper," said Kathryn R. Mahaffey, an E.P.A official who helped write the article. "It's really a consensus on what we know about mercury."
Dr. Acheson said the food and drug agency planned to add more fish to its list of those that should not be eaten if new mercury testing reveals that a species tends to exceed the new levels.
EPA – HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL
During March, 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency released the Clean Air Mercury Rule, limiting harmful mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, but officials shied away from making the controls any more stringent, stressing that further limitations would have an averse effect on industry that "far exceeded the public health payoff." Such a conclusion is easy to make when one chooses to ignore the data to the contrary; although the EPA paid for a Harvard University study "co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists," the agency's top officials "ordered the finding stripped from public documents." Dealing with the study, which includes an analysis that "estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did," would have forced reconsideration of the pro-industry rules favored by the Bush administration and industry groups. When a top EPA official was questioned on the omission, he blamed the late submission of the study and flaws in its analysis; however, "interviews and documents" dispute both of those critiques. The ultimate question is, "Are you saving the industry a billion dollars but taking away $10 billion worth of benefits for the general public?"
By Molly Ivins
Dec. 14, 2003
I can't tell whether this administration is flaunting its cynicism, its contempt for science or its conviction that, when in power, you help your contributors and fry your enemies -- although how millions of small children and unborn fetuses came to be enemies of George W. Bush & Co. is beyond my political or theological understanding.
We are talking about the rollback announced last week in regulating mercury pollution. Except, of course, that it wasn't announced as a rollback -- it was announced as a great step forward.
This raises the always timely question "How dumb do they think we are?," and this time the answer is, "Profoundly dumb," because it is real hard to get fooled by this one. You look at the numbers and tell me.
Mercury is a neurotoxin that damages the brains and nervous systems of fetuses and young children and probably affects adults as well. It is one of the suspected, though not proven, causes of recent increases in autism, Parkinson's and Alz-heimers. It is known to cause learning and attention disabilities and mental retardation.
Eight percent of American women of childbearing age al-ready have mercury in their blood above the Environmental Protection Agency's "safe level."
Mercury emissions from power plants get into rain clouds and come down in lakes and rivers, poisoning fish and the people who eat them. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury, spewing 50 tons a year into the air -- about 40 percent of the total.
In December 2000, the EPA issued a finding requiring the maximum amount of technically achievable reduction in mercury. This was expected to result in a 90 percent mercury reduction by 2007.
Instead, the new EPA proposals downgrade mercury emissions -- particularly mercury emissions from the utility industry -- by taking it out of the "hazardous pollutant" category.
It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
Simply by implementing the laws already on the books, annual mercury emissions from power plants could be reduced to 5 tons annually by 2007. But Bush's EPA introduced a new plan last week to cap emission at 34 tons a year by 2010 and then 15 tons by 2018.
This means hundreds of more tons of mercury discharged during the next 15 years, and that many more children born brain-damaged. I'd really like to know if John Graham, Bush's cost-benefit guru at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, factored in the cost of special ed, health care and caretaking for those kids.
The good news is that this will save the utility industry hundreds of millions of dollars -- worth every retarded child, eh?
Besides, the coal industry contributed more than $250,000 to Bush's last campaign, and you didn't. John Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resource Defense Council, called it "a grotesque giveaway."
The truth is that the EPA is doing nothing about mercury pollution. The decrease to 34 tons a year is a byproduct of new filtering requirements for nitrogen (causes smog) and sulfur dioxide (causes acid rain), which aren't much to write home about, either.
Mike Leavitt, new head of the EPA, defended the proposal as an emissions-trading program, like the one that has reduced acid rain. But the Environmental Defense Fund, which has endorsed the use of market-based, cap-and-trade systems for reducing some pollutants, is appalled by the mercury decision and apparently not comforted by the EPA's decision to change mercury's classification.
One reason that cap-and-trade won't work on mercury pollution is that it is pretty much site-specific. It hangs around the neighborhood it comes from, so you get dangerous pockets of it.
In a nicely dovetailed bureaucratic action, the Food and Drug Administration chimed in with a new, softer advisory on mercury-contaminated fish consumption.
Consumers Union believes that the new FDA advisory is so vague as to which fish are likely to have concentrations of mercury (those at the top of the fish food chain) that it is largely useless.
I once heard a Texas politician being begged to consider doing something "for the children of Texas." He inquired back, "Do the little bastards have a PAC?"
Well, no they don't. But they have mommies.
Their mommies can read numbers. Their mommies know the difference between 50 tons a year and 5 tons a year. Mommies know what a campaign contribution is. Mommies can tell the difference between a cynical sack of excrement and safe babies.
Mommies can get very angry.
Rain contaminated with mercury from coal-fired electric plants is fouling Midwest lakes and rivers, according to a report released by environmental groups.
Mercury is showing up in Chicago rainfall at levels 42 times greater than federal standards have considered safe, according to Andrew Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation. Mercury levels in rain are even higher in Detroit and Duluth, Minn., he said.
Separately, New York state’s attorney general took legal action against 17 Midwestern coal-fired electric plants, saying their pollution has contaminated air in the Northeast for years.
The mercury contamination report was released by groups including the Environmental Law and Policy Center and the Sierra Club. The data was collected from government and university studies with the help of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Buchsbaum said.
“Unfortunately, the largest contributor to the problem, the electric utility industry, continues to get a free ride on its mercury pollution,” Peter Morman said of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “While other sources are reducing emissions, no such requirements exist for coal-fired power plants.”
Morman said mercury pollution by Midwestern utilities probably will increase because deregulation will prompt them to generate higher levels of electricity.
Buchsbaum said the plants should cut their mercury emissions, with an eye on eliminating them, by turning to cleaner energy sources such as natural gas.
Scott Miller, Commonwealth Edison’s air quality engineer, said Tuesday that the utility’s seven coal-fired plants emitted 1,700 pounds of mercury in 1998 _ an amount that has been steady for several years.
Miller said ComEd is cooperating with the EPA studies on mercury emissions. He said the utility has no plans to convert its coal plants to gas.
A naturally occurring metal, mercury accumulates in fish and becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food chain. In humans, the neurotoxin can slow fetal and child development and cause brain damage.
Buchsbaum said data collected by the University of Michigan Air Quality Laboratory found that rain falling on Chicago’s South Side had mercury levels ranging from 5.4 parts per trillion to 74.5 parts per trillion.
The EPA considers mercury levels in the Great Lakes to be safe for wildlife at 1.3 parts per trillion. For humans, it is 1.8 parts per trillion.
The Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry in the Department of Health and Human Services says that based on the latest studies, people can consume as much as 0.3 micrograms of mercury per kilogram of their body weight without health risks. Its previous standard—and the standard still used by the EPA—had been 0.1 microgram.
But the health impact of low levels of mercury contamination has been widely disputed. Congress last year barred further regulation of mercury until the National Academy of Sciences completes an 18-month study of the health effects.
Buchsbaum said studies show rain scrubs the air of the mercury that belches from coal-fired power plants and incinerators and carries it into the Great Lakes and other Midwest lakes and rivers.
In New York, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he planned to file notice to sue 17 plants in five Midwestern states, accusing them of violating the 1990 federal Clean Air Act.
Spitzer said the plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia failed to upgrade equipment that cleans smokestack emissions when they made other big investments in the plants, a requirement under the act.
Preliminary findings of a six-month EPA study suggested a pattern of such violations by operators of many of the country’s biggest and dirtiest coal-burning plants.
The increased acid rain problems in the Northeast over the last 20 years have been linked to sulfates and nitrates, which are products of coal-fired power plants. Recent studies by the EPA and the Department of Energy indicate that 85 to 90 percent of the sulfates over the mid-Atlantic and New England states originate in Midwestern power plant emissions.
About 98% of the mercury in coal is released during combustion.
Mercury has poisoned our fish supply to the point where it is hazardous to
eat fish, particularly tuna. This is quite disturbing. Additionally, since
the global need for energy is expanding so quickly, an aggressive mercury
control strategy for new and existing coal fired power plants is crucial to
adequately reducing the global mercury load."
Given the media coverage of mercury issues, this is a very fair question.
First, you need to understand that everyone agrees that addressing the risks
associated with exposures of methylmercury (that is the problem – not
elemental mercury) is of concern. But a meaningful public policy must first
understand the risk and then develop strategies that adequately address the
identified risk.
As I said, mercury (in and of itself) is not the concern. The problem is
when elemental mercury enters into a water body, and because of exposure to
certain bacteria in the water – some of the mercury changes form into
methylmercury – which is a neurotoxin and can, in high doses, result in
health effects. Clearly, not all airborne mercury will become deposited
in water (some remains in the air and recycles in the Earth) and
only a portion of the
mercury that does become deposited in water actually changes form (which is
called speciation) into methylmercury.
While this is a very serious matter, we first must be clear about who is at
risk. The U.S. EPA, Food and Drug Administration, and others agree that the
health risks associated to exposures of methylmercury are extremely low for
the vast majority of the population. The risks are highest among women of
childbearing age who eat large
amounts of fish as a part of their diet.
Understanding the difference in the risk analysis used for government
rulemaking and how we use that information in our daily life choices is not
always easy. For instance, one of the biggest concerns that many risk
experts have is that the public will misinterpret the information related to
methylmercury in fish -- and, in much the same way K.G. has indicated in
this question, reduce their fish consumption. That may not be the best
course for many people because experts know that fish is a key part of a
healthy low-fat diet. Instead, consumers would be better off more fully
understanding their personal risks and then, if you are in an identified
risk category, simply limiting their consumption of certain types of fish
(because some fish contain higher levels of methylmercury than others).
Although it might be a little technical, I've included
a paper on this topic written by Dr. Gail Charnley, a noted expert in
the field of risk analysis and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Center for
Risk Analysis.
It is also very important to note that mercury in the atmosphere comes from
a lot of different sources – in fact
most of the mercury comes from
naturally-occurring sources. Some groups like to say that coal-based
utilities are the leading source of mercury emissions – but that is not
true. U.S. power plants, while they are a leading source of manmade mercury
emissions – contribute only 1% to
the mercury emitted into the atmosphere. To show the minimal impact
utility emissions and other manmade sources of mercury are thought to have
on methylmercury bio-accumulation in fish, research shows that tuna samples
from 500 years ago had roughly the same amount mercury as tuna today
(despite the fact that coal use and other manmade source of mercury have
increased).
But, the question is not whether or not to reduce utility mercury emissions
– that process is already underway. Although it has not been measured, we
know intuitively that utility
mercury emissions have likely already been reduced by a significant amount
due to the use of pollution control devices installed at power plants to
reduce other emissions (this process is often referred to as co-benefits).
This has not been measured since it has only been over the last several
years that U.S. power plants were required to measure and report mercury
emissions.
Still, going forward, the U.S. EPA last year released rules that will
require a 70% reduction in utility
mercury emissions over the next several years.
Some groups have suggested that more stringent regulations are required.
However, EPA’s modeling shows that the water deposition of mercury in U.S.
waterways assumed to be the case once the new EPA rules are fully
implemented would be
unchanged (remember, this is important because it is not airborne
mercury, but rather mercury in the waterways about which there is concern)
that what would occur if you
totally eliminated all mercury emissions from U.S. power plants.
This makes perfect sense once you grasp the fact that coal-based power
plants are really small contributors (in relative term) to the mercury that
enters the atmosphere – and that all mercury (whether it is from manmade or
natural sources) can enter waterways and thus possibly change into
methylmercury. The EPA rule
clearly represents a fair share for the U.S. electricity industry.
The other good thing about this rule (getting to the 2nd part of your
question) is that it will promote the development and deployment of new
technologies that can be used here at home – as well as around the world
(because facts also show that emissions from other countries do travel into
our boarders and thus also have the chance to settle in our waterways).
For more information on this, there are a couple of additional resources.
First, there is a
primer that more fully describes this issue, as well as an excellent
website on this topic.