| See Report by Hoosier Environmental Council on mercury |
Somewhere north of Fort Wayne lies an area of nearly 500 square miles considered to be the most mercury-contaminated spot in the country, according to figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental Defense, a private non-profit organization, released the figures—compiled earlier by the EPA, but never published—in December, listing the 484-square-mile "hot spot" as leading the country in mercury deposits. [See Executive Summary below]
Mercury accumulates in fish and can threaten the development of infants and fetuses when consumed.
The report was released days before the EPA proposed its first regulations to cut mercury emissions from power plants. But environmentalists believe the regulations are not strict enough.
Report sketchy on source
Using data from 1998, the Environmental Defense report is based on a complicated computer model that analyzed weather patterns, mercury emissions from area coal-fired power plants and other information, said Michael Shore, a senior policy analyst for Environmental Defense.
The report from Environmental Defense, a national organization of 400,000 members founded in 1967, does not give a source for the contamination. Nor does it specifically define the hot-spot area by county lines or municipal boundaries.
Instead, the report used mapping done by the EPA that divided the country into 22-mile-by-22-mile square grids. The checkerboard square with the most mercury deposits was a grid ambiguously described as being north of Fort Wayne, Shore said.
"It's not a precise spot," he said. "When you look at the specific sites, when you look at the states in the Midwest and the East, there are hot spots all over. . . . The places where mercury deposition is highest, local sources dominate."
Shore blamed the coal-fired power plants in Indiana, as well as plants in northeast Illinois and western Ohio, for the contamination. Hot spots also are located in Michigan, Maryland, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Indiana is home to 23 coal-fired power plants, more than any state except Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, said Leise Jones, field director for the Indiana Public Interest Research Group.
The group, which is staffed mainly by students at Indiana University in Bloomington, recently released figures that showed Indiana was responsible for the country's fourth-largest amount of mercury pollution.
According to the report - written by a coalition called Clear the Air and based on EPA data - the plants released 5,728 pounds of mercury in 2001.
About 91,000 pounds of mercury was emitted nationwide, the report states.
Residents 'not at risk'
People who live near the hot spot shouldn't panic, Shore said.
"People in northeast Indiana aren't necessarily at greater risk," he said. "However, it is emblematic that there is a lot of mercury pollution coming to that area."
Residents should not be concerned about digesting mercury through drinking water or absorbing it from soil. They should, however, restrict the amount of fish they eat, especially locally caught fish.
Mercury exists naturally in coal, and when coal is burned, it dissipates in the air. It mixes with rainand falls to the ground and into rivers and streams, where a biological process transforms it into a highly toxic form that builds up in fish, according to the EPA.
People are exposed to mercury mainly by eating fish at the top of the food chain, such as bass, carp, pike and swordfish. The mercury in the fish can cause birth defects and developmental disorders in young children, Jones said.
Fish consumption advisories issued by the Indiana Department of Health are especially strict for young children, pregnant and nursing women, and women who might have children in the next six years.
Health department officials in Allen County and in the mercury hot spot north of Fort Wayne stress moderation in fish consumption.
"My understanding is the amount of fish flesh you'd have to consume to be any issue is certainly more than anybody would consume," Noble County Health Officer Gerald Warrener said.
State advisories recommend that children and pregnant women never eat carp from Indiana rivers and streams.
Andy Knott, air and energy policy director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, called the advisories "a travesty."
"It's shameful that we can't freely consume fish out of our supposedly fresh waters," Knott said. "It can be avoided. We don't have to have fish contaminated with mercury."
Turning concern into results
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is aware of the mercury issue, which it considers a national problem, spokeswoman Laura Pippenger said.
The agency is working with the EPA to find out how it gathered and interpreted the data that indicated the northeast Indiana hot spot.
"This sort of modeling can have discrepancies that can indicate a hot spot like this," Pippenger said.
But the Environmental Defense study shows that mercury pollution is caused by power plants nearby, Shore said.
"It travels to some extent, but communities that live around the power plants are most at risk to mercury pollutants," said Jones, of the Indiana Public Interest Group.
Shore and Jones hope that information will convince the Bush administration to enact tough regulations on power plants.
"If we're going to clean up pollution, . . . we need to reduce mercury from local sources," Shore said.
The EPA in December introduced two proposals to cut mercury emissions.
One proposal would decrease emissions 30 percent by 2008.
The other, called a "cap and trade" approach, would cut emissions nationwide 70 percent by 2018. It allows power companies to buy and sell emission credits, allowing some power plants to cut emissions by less than 70 percent if other plants slash emissions more.
The EPA favors the second proposal, spokesman John Millett said.
"There's still a lot of science to be done to be absolutely certain to make sure how mercury emissions behave in the atmosphere and how they deposit," he said. "What we do know is that this first regulation proposed to reduce mercury from power plants will certainly help the environment, and we'll see environmental improvement.
"That's the important part," he said. "We can address local issues as we get more information on them, but this is an important first step."
Fossil-fuel-fired power plants are the largest source of human-generated mercury emissions in the United States, according to the EPA.
American Electric Power releases 10 percent of all power plant mercury emissions, making it the country's largest contributor, according to the Clear the Air report.
"We're probably a large emitter of mercury because we're the largest generator of electricity in the country, and a lot of our electricity comes from coal," American Electric Power spokeswoman Melissa McHenry said.
Plants pushed to action
McHenry said that mercury pollution is a global issue and that mercury levels in the United States are significantly affected by global emissions. She said there's no commercially available technology to cut mercury emissions that would work in every power plant.
And whatever emissions the industry does cut, "it's not going to have a huge impact."
But Knott, of the Hoosier Environmental Council, disagrees.
"Mercury does travel some distance, so it's impossible to say exactly what power plants it's coming from," he said. "It's safe to say the overall problem is from those sources."
Knott, like other environmentalists, wants to see President Bush sign laws to cut mercury emissions in power plants by 90 percent by 2008.
He also dislikes the idea of emissions trading favored by the EPA because, Knott said, unlike sulfur and acid rain, mercury emissions remain local.
"What the Bush administration is proposing is too little, too late," he said. "It's 10 more years of contamination and in the end, still more contamination."
U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Fort Wayne, said the hot spot is something the government should investigate.
"It's a warning sign," he said, "even if it's just hypothetical."
source: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/7685703.htm 11jan04
Executive summary
Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal that poses a major public health threat. Because mercury can interfere with development, fetuses and children are most at risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 8% of women of childbearing age in the United States have mercury levels in their blood above what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe. In other words, millions of American women who could be pregnant are exposed to dangerous levels of mercury each year, putting more than 300,000 newborns at risk of brain damage and learning disabilities.
Mercury is released into the air from power plant smokestacks and other sources. It can fall to the ground with rain (or without) and enter water bodies in a process known as deposition. People are most often exposed to mercury by eating contaminated fish. The problem of mercury-contaminated fish is widespread, with 43 states issuing advisories to limit consumption of mercury-laden fish. Coal-fired power plants account for about 40% of the mercury emissions in the United States—by far the largest single source. Despite this, no limits exist on mercury pollution from power plants.
Findings
Analysis of emission trends and recent modeling of how mercury is transported and deposited into soil and water leads to three important findings that should influence how policy makers address mercury pollution:
OUT OF CONTROL
1. Mercury pollution from electric utilities remains completely unregulated. While other industries have achieved considerable reductions in mercury emissions, mercury pollution from electric utilities is predicted to increase with increased electrical demand. National policies have been successful at reducing mercury emissions from medical waste incinerators and municipal waste incinerators by over 90% since 1990 (See Figure A). These sectors provide a model for reductions that could be made in the power plant sector.
CLOSE TO HOME
2. Mercury pollution within the United States puts fetuses and children at risk. Since mercury does not break down, it can travel a long way before it is deposited in the environment. However, modeling shows that significant amounts of mercury in waters across the nation come from pollution sources within the United States. Sources in the United States contribute to local mercury “hot spots” and add to global mercury pollution levels, leading to contaminated water, fish that is not healthy for consumption, and brain damage in infants.
3. Local sources can lead to local mercury “hot spots.” Local emissions of mercury are largely responsible for mercury deposition hot spots (locations where mercury deposition is high), providing an excellent opportunity for effective reductions. Recent modeling suggests that at mercury hot spots pollution sources within the state can account for large portions of the deposition (Figure B). At hot spots across the United States, local sources often account for 50% to 80% of the mercury deposition. As shown in Figure B, for example, local pollution sources account for over 70% of the deposition in hot spots in Indiana, Michigan, and Maryland. In another recent analysis in south Florida, dramatic reductions in mercury pollution from local incinerators was accompanied by a lowering of mercury concentrations in large mouth bass by 60–75%, indicating the importance of controlling local sources to reduce local contamination.
Reducing power plant pollution is critical to lowering local mercury deposition and avoiding the dangerous contamination of fish, wildlife and people. EPA is required by the federal Clean Air Act to lower mercury air pollution from power plants. To protect public health and the environment from harmful mercury emissions, state and federal policy-makers should take the following steps:
source: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3370_mercuryPowerPlants%2Epdf 11jan04
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