Pass the Neurotoxin Please!
| WASHINGTON, March 22 -- Following
is the reaction of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to the EPA's omission of
data, showing greater public health benefits of limiting mercury, from
the Bush administration's new mercury rule. Leahy will ask EPA Acting
Administrator/Nominee Stephen Johnson's role in and knowledge of the
omission:
"The mercury rule has become Exhibit A in the cozy way the Bush Administration puts special interests above the public's health when it comes to environmental decisions. From start to finish with this rule, they have done the industry's bidding, hidden information from the public and ignored sound science when it suits them. "Hiding key health and economic information from the American people has become their standard operating procedure. From the very beginning, the Bush Administration has manipulated science and cooked the books to make their mercury proposal look better. The hoops they have gone through to avoid following the Clean Air Act would make a lion tamer proud. The result is a mercury rule that is a travesty upon the American people. "I would like to know what Acting Administrator Johnson knew about this. As a scientist, he should know the seriousness of this omission. Many of us have had the hope that, if he were to be confirmed, EPA would again value science the way it has in the past." |
March 19, 2005 - This week, the EPA put out its rule on mercury pollution, and it's bad.
It
has taken EPA a long time to get around to a rule for controlling emissions
of this dangerous neurotoxin from the largest unregulated source, power plants.
But for many reasons, the rule's illusion of progress is just that: an illusion.
To control the emissions, critics of the rule argue, the Clean Air Act requires installation of the maximum available control technology at each plant. But EPA, reacting to power-industry pressure, chose instead a cap-and-trade system. Here's the problem: If a plant meets its required emission reduction by buying an "allowance" from another emitter that is already under the cap, the plant can keep spewing mercury. [it allows power plants to buy and sell pollution credits, effectively letting dirtier plants buy the right to keep higher pollution levels, rather than cleaning emissions] This system doesn't help with mercury (or any other pollution for that matter), a heavy metal that settles in the neighborhood. Mercury is the only metal that is in liquid form at room temperature, which means that it evaporates easily and thus spreads throughout the environment. It tends to concentrate in fish, birds, and other wildlife.
It's a corporate "cheat", its underhanded and dirty, allowing the continued destruction of our natural resources and perhaps causing a disastrous pestilence to befall our children.
Bush in his address on Wednesday March 16th informed the listening public that we needed to move to other forms of energy like "coal" which is plentiful. Many however, do not know that among the largest emitters of mercury pollution: coal-fired power plants, factories that produce chlorine, and automobile scrap yards. About 115 tons of mercury is emitted in the US each year, 48 tons of which come from power plants. Connect the dots! More Government pandering is in the offing.
A report by the EPA Inspector General found that senior agency officials manipulated the development of the mercury rule to ease, to favor the emissions trading plan and another report by the Government Accountability Office determined the agency's economic analysis of the mercury rule was seriously flawed.
"This rule is blatantly illegal," said Senator James Jeffords, a Vermont Independent. "Under this rule, hundreds of the oldest, dirtiest power plants won't even control mercury emissions for more than 20 years. That is what this rule gives us, more pollution for longer than the law allows." "What we see coming out of this agency doesn't even come close to protecting children's health," says Susan West Marmagas, director of the environmental and health program at Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Would you like a little Neurotoxin with your dinner, Sir?
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "Instead of making polluters pay to clean up the mercury pollution they caused, the new Bush administration regulations will make children pay with their health ... and will drag out mercury cleanup for decades, putting several more generations of children at risk of mercury's dangerous health effects."
Bush
is very "lets fix it now" with our Social Security, where is that attitude
when it is really needed? When we and our children are being poisoned
by his corporate buddies. Bush is well aware that mercury emissions from the
nation's 1,300 power plants are currently unregulated. Bush would have
to be on another planet to not know that exposure to mercury can cause permanent
harm, neurological damage in humans, and reproductive harm in wildlife. Young
children whose brains are still developing, and women of childbearing age are
most at risk from the toxic metal.
"We're talking about a neurotoxin here. We're not talking about something benign," says Bill Becker, executive director of the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials and the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators.
A study being published this month in Health and Place reports a possible connection between mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and an increase in the number of children being diagnosed with autism. The study, which was conducted in Texas, compared levels of mercury emissions to autism rates in 1,200 Texas school districts.
Claudia
Miller,a family and community medicine professor at the University of Texas
Health Science Center in San Antonio, says 'The main finding is that for every
thousand pounds of environmentally released mercury, we saw a 17 percent increase
in autism rates.' That's pretty impressive findings. Not conclusive, but impressive
just the same.
A 2003 Centers for Disease Control Study estimated that 8% of women of childbearing age have blood mercury levels above those deemed safe by the National Academies of Science. Forty-four states have already issued warnings for consumers to restrict their intake of locally caught fish because of an elevated risk of mercury exposure.
EPA officials maintain that the standards significantly cut mercury from plants under their jurisdiction but that the majority of mercury pollution in the U.S. comes from foreign sources. "We could eliminate all mercury emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants, but it still wouldn't solve the problem -- because most Americans (close to 80%) are consuming fish from overseas, from countries and waters beyond our reach and control," the agency says in a statement.
I do not understand how the EPA maintains a straight face when making these statements. They are after all, the very ones releasing the warnings to those forty four states with the ..ahem...elevated mercury risk. Who has who in who's pocket?
It
is estimated that every year, 48 tons of mercury are released into the air
from of coal-burning plants.
Many claim that because the US is not responsible for the global mercury pollution, the Bush plan is correctly contexted. It's a childish and whining, "But Mom! I didn't break it, why do I have to clean it up?!" defense, and one that gets future generations even further polluted. One the world cannot afford to have if we wish our children's children to be healthy.
The Bush administration's alleged concern about the global mercury problem is hypocritical given its recent rejection of an international framework to develop a global treaty on mercury, said John Walke, director of the Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Walke said. "The Bush administration is speaking out of both sides of its mouth and making no commitment to solving the mercury problem and protecting public health."
OK, nevermind the world right now, lets look at our own backyard. We must start somewhere. The Bush administration is knowingly and wantonly harming this nations children and citizens. It is an insult to public health and the environment, its downright dangerous. It is a slap in the face to every American, to each mother and father who's child is affected needlessly. This rule does nothing to alleviate the problem of continuing mercury pollution. Readily available affordable technology could clean up 90% of the emissions, and the Administration favors cheap and dirty coal over the protection of families.
Next
time you sit down to a meal, say your prayers and pass the neurotoxin please.
(it will probably go well with the Perchlorate
in the lettuce)