Protecting Kids' Brains is Too Expensive?
It's beginning to look like Illinois' biggest mercury polluters are going to argue that protecting children's brains and nervous system is too expensive for them. See this story in the Chicago Tribune.
If so then they must only care about their own pocketbooks, because the rest of us are already paying for their failure to install modern pollution controls. A Mt. Sinai study released last year estimated that mercury contamination costs at least $8.7 billion annually in health care costs and decreased productivity due to kids brains and nervous systems being damaged by mercury.
Also, what's the impact on Illinois' fishing and tourism industry due to the health warning now attached to every river and lake in Illinois due to mercury pollution? How many more people would spend their vacation and recreation dollars fishing in Illinois if it were safe to feed their catch to their families?
Most public health problems are difficult to solve because there are usually many contributing factors that are hard to get a handle on. This is a case where most of the Illinois mercury pollution comes out of 22 smokestacks, and the technology to shut most of it off is readily available.
It's time to do it.
Governor Blagojevich announcing his mercury reduction plan Thursday at Navy Pier in Chicago.
Originally posted at Illinois Sierra Club
7 comments:
I hope it's the right fix. Here is what the State Water Survey folks said in 2004,
The hypothesis that most Hg in Illinois and the USA soils is of anthropogenic origin is rejected. Where as Hg is a trace element --its concentation is low compared to that of other Earth elements-- Hg concentrations and contents of Illinois and USA soils are too great to be accounted for by atmospheric anthropogenic Hg deposition. This finding does not mean that atmospheric Hg pollution does not contribute to environmental Hg. Nor does it mean that there are situations where conditionss are such that most Hg does come from anthropogenic atmospheric deposition. It does indicate, however, that because environmentally significant amounts of natural Hg are generally found in soils, research is needed to investigate the mobility and fate of natural and anthropogenic Hg in terrestrail and aquatic environments.
So according to the gurus with the State at the Illinois Water Survey last year, it wasn't air pollution creating the problem.
More from the Feds this time if you're into it.
I always worry the Pols are trying to bamboozle us with easy, but fake solutions.
This looks like a fake solution to me. I have a lot of faith in the Illinois State Water Survey. They've been great help to me in the past on flood plain issues.
They provide an excellant public service.
Larry Horse -
Actually Blagojevich has increased fees for pollution across the board in Illinois. The level of the fee is probably not high enough in most cases to influence behavior, but it is high enough to give IEPA the funds to do a better job addressing air, land, and water pollution. The only problem is that most of these new revenues, like so many others, have been "swept" into General Revenue Funds. Hopefully in the future, when budget pressures are reduced, all of these new fee proceeds can be spent on beefing up IEPA's programs in these areas.
I totally miss the "Larry Horse" bit on WSCR, by the way. Any idea why they dropped it?
I always tend to question a premise where a costly and questionable approach to a highly technical issue (such as this one) is advocated by an "emotional, attack driven appeal" which is long on the emotion and devisiveness, but short on the technology.
As in "It's beginning to look like Illinois' biggest mercury polluters are going to argue that protecting children's brains and nervous system is too expensive for them."
Looks like a "emotional, attack driven appeal" to me. And when it starts out that way (and is short on facts to boot), looks like it's going to be a tough sell.
Be interesting to see these advocates response to the study done by the Illinois State Water Survey on this issue.
So the reason for fish advisories in Illinois is because it naturally migrates from soils into fish?
Doesn't that mean fish advisories in Illinois would have been appropriate for the last 10,000+ years?
Perhaps ISWS would care to explain exactly how so much mercury gets from soils into Illinois fish that we have to warn women and children not to eat Illinois fish?
Since air is not their job, I doubt ISWS is concerned about the consequences of 7,000 pounds of atomized mercury released into our air.
Unlike most toxins that accumulate in fat, I heard mercury accumulates in muscle tissue.
While it helps, you can't trim away the fat and expect to safely eat Illinois fish.
no anon, ISWS doesn't say it naturally migrates from the soils.
They say it can't be accountef for as air pollution, and more research is needed to figure out why it's concentrating and why.
Our Gov has jumped the gun with a solution that doesn't solve the problem. It just dumps on unpopular utilities.
So you clean this up, and the stuff still concentrates in fish, and folks start eating it because they figure you've solved the problem.
You've done a real public service.
ISWS is a State Agency with a history of independence and professionalism. They're out front, on attribution, with a published report. We should listen to them.
The money utilities spend correcting something that's not the cause of the problem might be better spent figuring out how we're creating the problem.
It's not that complicated if we take the politics and hype of it.
Post a Comment