Mercury Pollution: 38 Tons of Mercury Pollution is Emitted by Our Power Plants? Why?

Mercury is a deadly neurotoxin with serious and life threatening effects on the body. It is even more dangerous for a pregnant woman to have high levels of Mercury in her blood. The Mercury crosses into the placenta of her unborn baby in the womb causing both mental and physical birth defects. It is interesting to note the escalation of Autism, learning disorders, and brain cancer in young babies and children in the past few years. Perhaps there is a real answer for parents in the overall accumulation of Mercury from every level.

In my last article, I wrote about the 38 tons of mercury pollution being released into our environment today in 2009 by our own coal-fired power plants. Why is it happening? Why isn't the government doing something to stop it? So I began to research the subject and was sickened by what I found.

It seems that way back in 2000, it was known how horrific the mercury pollution was in this country and the impact it was having on our unborn infants and children. The EPA itself admitted that hundreds of thousands of newborns were at risk from the mothers eating Mercury contaminated fish during pregnancy. This was when the warning to reduce your intake of certain fish and especially while pregnant first began. Senators, Representatives, Attorney generals and over 600,000 Americans all demanded the government do something about the coal-fired power plants.

Research was conducted at that time by researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Harvard Center for Risk Analysis on the effects of Mercury pollution on our children. It documented the huge costs in health care and loss of productivity that were resulting from children born with impaired brain function and lowered IQ due to Mercury toxicity. Their conclusions reported that 5 billion dollars could be saved with the reduction of neurological defects and cardiovascular disease by reducing the mercury pollution from power plants. The Harvard research was completed by 2005 but was ignored and covered up by the Bush administration..

In December of 2000, the EPA was pressured to impose strict rules to reduce the Mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA ordered the power plants to install MACT (maximum achievable control technology) within 3 years. By this technology, Mercury emissions would have been cut by 90 percent by 2008. These MACT standards had already been implemented by municipal and medical waste incinerators since the 1990's and had achieved a 90 percent reduction in Mercury emissions already. So the technology was there and was already in use by some Mercury polluting industries.

Well money, power, and greed came into play from the power companies. The MACT strict rules were retracted (The Rescission Rule) by the Bush administration in 2005.The other rule set into place by the Bush administration was called (The Pollution Trading Rule) which did require significant reductions in mercury emissions but gave the power plants a 13 year compliance time frame to make the changes with many loopholes. So no real Mercury reductions will occur until almost 2018. This rule allows coal fired power plants to emit up to 38 tons of Mercury pollution until the year 2018 which is only a 21 percent reduction. It was possible even in 2005 with the MAST technology to reduce emissions 90 percent by 2008. The EPA itself acknowledged that emissions might not even be reduced until the year 2026 because of the way the rule is worded and loopholes.

What floors me is that in 2005 when the EPA under the Bush administration was giving in to the greedy coal-fired power plants, President Bush ignored opposition coming from every level of government. His opposition included 45 US senators, 11 state attorney generals, 180 U.S. Representatives, 680,000 letters from private citizens, protests from the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, and nearly 500 national, state, and local sportsmen organizations. How could we have let this happen and how was he allowed to do this despite the flood of opposition and research against the relaxed rules of the "pollution trading rule" His rationalization for these relaxed rules was that most of the Mercury pollution problem was not coming from our country but from countries such as China. He ignored the research available at the time and used his power to override the protests coming in from every sector of private and public representation. This is not government by the people and for the people. How many babies has this affected? How many billions in health care costs has this caused? How many of the escalating numbers of children with autism and learning disabilities is due to the continuing pollution of Mercury into our environment by those 60 worst coal-fired power plants?

The good news is that many individual states have imposed restrictive rules on new coal fired power plants that are using the MACT standards. That still leaves 60 coal-fired power plants that are emitting 38 tons of Mercury pollution into our environment each year. Each and every American should be putting pressure on the Obama administration and current government to correct this horrific assault on our environment now not later. If we allow this Mercury pollution to be emitted into our environment for another 8 years, the damage may be irreversible. You can do something as an individual and that is to do your part to put pressure on the current government to correct this deadly problem now. Demand that the coal-fired power plants reduce their emissions now, not in 2018. It's your life and your children's lives, so it is up to you to demand action now.

References:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55268-2005Mar21.html

www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/050324.asp