Fw: One-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their hair that exceed federal health standards.

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Monday, October 25, 2004 7:09 PM

One-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their

hair that exceed federal health standards.

 

 

October 25, 2004 | Back Issues

 

Mercury Dangers Downplayed in Favor of Power Industry

 

An interim study released last week by researchers at the Environmental Quality

Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Asheville, has found that

one-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their hair that

exceed federal health standards.

 

Clean air protections suffered a substantial setback when the administration

delayed a previously scheduled mercury clean-up by 10 years. It also suppressed

data on how American women and their unborn children were being harmed by

mercury exposure, and granted unprecedented influence to the coal and oil-fired

power plants responsible for mercury pollution.

 

Under the Clean Air Act, utilities would have been required to reduce mercury

emissions by 90 percent over four years. Instead, the Bush administration

proposed scaling back and delaying the clean-up to allow utilities to cut

emissions by just 70 percent over 14 years.

 

The administration's plan also allows higher polluting companies to purchase

" credits " from those that operate in a cleaner fashion. Environmental experts

argue that such a plan will cause disproportionate harm to the people who live

in proximity to the dirtier plants.

 

Environmentalists have noted that 25 mercury-emitting utilities would benefit by

sharing in $2.7 billion in savings created by the weaker rules. An earlier

report by the Union of Concerned Scientists noted that the administration

allowed industry lawyers to write much of the language for the new rules. [1]

 

There are serious health implications to the delay in reducing mercury

emissions. An analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that 8

percent of women between the ages of 16 and 49 already have blood mercury levels

high enough to cause damage to their unborn children.

 

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000 determined

that about 12 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury levels above the

EPA standard.

 

Preliminary data from the UNC survey, commissioned by Greenpeace USA, found that

21 percent of 597 women of childbearing age had blood mercury levels higher than

the EPA's recommended limit. The Greenpeace-sponsored survey will test some

5,000 people by the end of next March.

 

Mercury is known to cause learning and developmental disorders as a result of

prenatal exposure. The EPA report was suppressed by the agency until leaked by

an insider to the Wall Street Journal. [2] Earlier this year, the EPA announced

that 630,000 American newborns were at risk of having unsafe levels of mercury

in their blood. [3]

 

A recent report by the League of Conservation Voters found that 18 million

Americans (including 1.5 million children) in the country's 12 top-emitting

states live within 10 miles of a coal-fired power plant and are thereby exposed

to dangerous levels of mercury pollution. [4]

 

" Children today and for generations to come will suffer needlessly as a result

of the administration's environmental policies, " said former EPA Administrator

Carol Browner, in a press release announcing the LCV study.

 

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SOURCES:

[1] " Scientific Integrity in Policymaking, " Union of Concerned Scientists, Feb.

2004.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Greenpeace press release, Oct. 20, 2004.

[4] LCV press release, Jun. 24, 2004.