TERC Environmental News:

Mercury Emissions Adversely Affect Minorities
OMBWatch - www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2508/1/219?TopicID=1

The cap-and-trade method for curbing mercury emissions will greatly harm those from the Great Lakes region, particularly American Indians, according to a new white paper released by the Center for Progressive Regulation (CPR).

The report takes aim at the cap-and-trade mercury rule proposed by EPA, which plans to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by setting an emission standard for mercury and then allowing plants to trade emissions up to a certain cap. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants are most dangerous to humans when they deposit in bodies of water. In an aquatic environment, mercury is converted to the toxin methylmercury, which is then absorbed by living tissue, particularly in fish. Humans generally absorb mercury into their bloodstreams through consuming fish.

High levels of mercury in the blood can cause irreversible neurological damage. It is particularly dangerous for pregnant women and children. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 15.7 percent, or one in six, women of child-bearing age has an unacceptably high level of methylmercury in their blood. EPA predicts that about 630,000 children are born each year with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood. The CDC study also found greater levels of mercury in the bloodstreams of black and Mexican Americans than in non-Hispanic white Americans.

Problems of the Cap-and-Trade Approach
Though EPA has denied that the cap-and-trade strategy will cause "hot spots," concentrated areas of higher or even increased emissions, the CPR report claims that it will in fact create areas of high mercury emission, in particular around the Great Lakes region. CPR relies on EPA's own data to show that, even though mercury emissions will be decreased nationally due to the regulation, emissions will increase locally in specific areas of the Great Lakes region. That region will see total mercury emissions fall by 27 percent, but emissions will increase locally in "20 out of 44 sources in the region. Further, in 2020, emissions are projected to be higher under cap-and-trade than under MACT [maximum achievable control technology] best case for every source in the upper Great Lakes states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin but one," according to the report.

An increase in emissions in that region is particularly harmful to the local population. The Great Lakes region geography is 23 percent water bodies, compared to a national average of 7 percent. Thus, mercury emissions in the Great Lakes region are more likely to be deposited in bodies of water where they can more easily be absorbed by the fish. Furthermore, people of the Great Lakes region eat a much greater amount of fish than the rest of the country, and Native Americans in the region eat ten times more fish per day than the average American and four times more than others in the Great Lakes region. Whereas the typical American eats 17 grams of fish per day, those in the Great Lakes regions eat 42 grams of fish per day and Great Lakes Indian tribes eat 190 grams per day.

Fish Advisories on the Rise
As the debate rages, national fish advisories for unsafe mercury levels have steadily increased across the country. A report published by PIRG found that 32 percent of fish caught in all U.S. lakes and 22 percent of all river miles were subject to mercury advisories in 2003. According to Fishing for Trouble: How Toxic Mercury Contaminates the Fish in U.S. Waterways, 44 states issued warnings in 2003, up from 27 in 1993.

Though the warnings have increased, the levels of mercury emissions have steadily decreased over the past several decades. EPA asserts that the increased advisories are due to increased reporting and testing rather than an increase in mercury levels in fish. That being the case, the rising level of fish advisories indicates that even more Americans may be impacted by mercury pollution than previously suspected.

» Close This Window