Mercury

If the old saying that you are what you eat proves true, Americans are in serious trouble. Today, mercury – an absurdly dangerous neurotoxin – is showing up at alarming levels in waterways across the country and in the fish being sold at your local supermarket, seafood restaurants and fish markets.  Each of the 50 United States now has at least one mercury fish consumption advisory within its boundaries.  For many of these states, the advisory stretches state-wide. Back in 2004, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Mike Leavitt, publicly acknowledged that virtually every acre of lakes and mile of rivers in the country could eventually be covered by advisories.  Since pollution is found in fish nearly every time a state looks for it, EPA assumes that whenever a state does that kind of monitoring it will wind up issuing a fish advisory, he recently said. Sadly, according to EPA estimates, this human health crisis now impacts 630,000 newborns each year. 

Each year in the United States, 1,100 coal-fired power plants spew roughly 50 tons of this deadly toxin into the air…. poisoning our nation’s lakes, rivers, and streams, fouling our water and food supply and endangering the health of you and your loved ones.  These antiquated power plants are this nation’s largest unregulated industrial source of mercury contamination, threatening the health and welfare of millions of Americans.  And just when the US government was on the verge of creating a Clean Air Act control rule that would have resulted in 90% reductions in mercury from these faculties, the Bush administration took office and scuttled the plans. So for 8 more years, while 400 tons more of mercury blanketed our waterways, Waterkeeper Alliance fought for more protective standards.

Today, we think we are close to achieving our goal of 90% reductions. In 2008 we defeated a Bush EPA mercury rule that would have allowed the industry to continue emitting many tons of mercury per year for decades to come. And now we’re working to make sure that the new EPA does the right thing with a mercury emission standards that are truly protective of human and aquatic health instead of the profits of an uncaring industry.