Going all-out against mercury

CHAPEL HILL -- North Carolina municipalities are demanding it. Other states are doing it. Now our state must impose maximum available control technology on all coal-burning power plants to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent as quickly as possible.

Why? Because it is the best way to protect our most precious natural resource, the brainpower of our children.

Against the strong advice of the pediatric and public health communities, in 2005 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency passed a wimpy rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants 70 percent by 2018. The rule also allows a "cap and trade" process, which may produce local hotspots of mercury pollution. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the American Nurses Association and the Southern Environmental Law Center are suing EPA over this weak rule because it fails to protect the public health of children, a requirement of the federal Clean Air Act.

While this lawsuit makes its way through the courts, mercury is still spewing into the air, falling into local water bodies, being transformed into toxic methylmercury and contaminating fish.

Methylmercury is a powerful brain poison, most dangerous to the fetal brain. It is actually concentrated by the fetus, reaching levels up to 70 percent higher than in maternal blood. It is then actively transported to the developing brain, where it impedes nerve cell division and migration, permanently distorts brain architecture and binds to DNA and RNA.

Prenatal exposure at levels consistent with consumption of contaminated fish can lead to IQ loss, memory and attention problems, fine motor deficits and developmental delay. These changes are likely permanent.

In an era of complex global problems and rapid technologic change, we cannot afford to allow preventable pollution which can and does affect the brains of the next generation.

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North Carolina is currently considering how to regulate mercury emissions from power plants. At the public meeting of the Environmental Management Commission in Raleigh on June 1, the question was posed: How much more should we do beyond what the federal government requires to control mercury pollution?

According to the commission, 65 percent of mercury emissions in the state come from coal-burning power plants. The EMC estimates that federal rule would require in North Carolina a 67 percent reduction by 2018. The EMC also believes, though many dispute this, that our state's Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002 will effectively reduce emissions by 70 percent in 2012.

Yet the EMC notes that control technologies exist that can reduce emissions by 90 percent, and commission members are asking citizens for input on whether and why to require maximum control technology.

Earlier, on March 31, the state toxicologist issued the first-ever statewide fish advisory for a freshwater fish species; women of childbearing age, pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under age 15 are advised not to eat any North Carolina-caught largemouth bass because of dangerous levels of mercury.

Local mercury pollution is getting worse, not better. Women and children who eat local fish, subsistence fishers, recreational fishers and cultural fishers are at increased risk.

There are around 120,000 babies born each year in the state. If exposure to methylmercury here is similar to the national exposure levels documented by the Centers for Disease Control in 2003, that means that somewhere between 9,000 and 19,000 babies each year are exposed in utero to mercury levels high enough to cause damage to the developing brain.

That's a lot of brains at risk.

To me this is an obvious choice. We should apply the maximum available control technology to all coal-burning power plants as quickly as possible. Estimated costs to consumers are about $4-$10 per year. That seems like a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing that we in North Carolina are doing the most we can do to protect our most vulnerable and precious citizens.

(Katherine M. Shea, M.D., is a Triangle-area pediatrician with expertise in children's environmental health.)