As many also fear, mercury poisoning may already be a significant problem in Utah, as a result of five existing coal-fired power plants within our borders. We simply don't know, as the state has not monitored for the toxin.
Nationwide, coal-fired power plants account for more than 40 percent of all mercury emissions, the largest single source. The Utah facilities are currently spewing more than 900 pounds into ours skies annually, much of it winding up in Utah's lakes and rivers and in states downwind. And with four more such power plants in the planning stages, we should be concerned considering what we know today about mercury.
Some are old enough to remember their high school chemistry teacher demonstrating the wonders of mercury by purposely dumping a small vile of it on the lab table. If such an exhibition was done today, the hazmat team would quarantine the entire school and the EPA would be declaring the classroom a Superfund site. For good reason. The statistics on mercury read like a horror novel.
Mercury is a naturally occurring element, largely harmless as long it's left alone. But once it is released into the air, such as through burning coal, it tends to bio-accumulate in fish tissue in its more toxic form, methylmercury. In other words, it never goes away. Women who consume such fish then pass the stuff on to their unborn fetuses or newborns. This is where the real damage occurs.
The EPA estimates that one in six women of childbearing age has mercury levels in her blood high enough to put her baby at risk. This equates into approximately 630,000 infants born each year with unsafe mercury levels, each of them facing neurological damage severe enough to impair learning and motor skills, along with increased risk of diseases such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation. The problem is so ubiquitous that 45 states currently post fish consumption advisories, particularly for expectant mothers.
A recent study by the University of Texas Health Science Center showed that for every 1,000 pounds of environmentally released mercury, there was a 17 percent increase in autism rates.
And findings released from a study in February by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences spells it out in economic terms. By analyzing blood data, researchers estimated that between 316,588 and 637,233 children each year have blood mercury levels high enough to cause permanent IQ loss, resulting in diminished economic productivity over the course of a lifetime.
Extrapolating the data further, they estimated that methylmercury toxicity costs the U.S. economy an estimated $8.7 billion annually in lost productivity, of which $1.3 billion is attributable to coal power plants.
Up until this year, mercury was ironically the only power plant pollutant not regulated by the EPA.
Under original Clean Air Act requirements, however, the agency was to start mandating mercury reductions upwards of 90 percent by 2008. But on March 15, the agency released a new rule that, according to evidence uncovered by an Los Angeles Times investigation, was rewritten by the White House and industry lobbyists.
It gives the industry up to 2018 to comply and allows dirtier plants to continue belching the same amounts of mercury, or more, by buying "credits" from cleaner facilities. A report by Environmental Defense took a hard look at this new rule and predicted that Utah could see a 257 percent increase in power plant mercury emissions by 2010. Is it any wonder that 10 states have already filed suit against the U.S. government over this very rule?
Now we're told that five gold mining operations in Nevada, all upwind of Utah, emitted more than 4,400 pounds of the stuff in 2003, and more than 11,000 pounds in 2001. That makes the problem we may already have from Utah's coal plants even more urgent, bearing in mind that as little as 1/70th of a teaspoon is enough to potentially contaminate the fish in a 25-acre lake.
While we don't know if Utah has a significant mercury problem that warrants health advisories, we do know that five existing coal plants are currently putting more mercury into our environment every day and that four more facilities will only make the problem worse, on top of what Nevada may be feeding us.
We also know that the technology exists today to 1) utilize our energy supplies much more efficiently, thereby preventing the need for more plant construction, and 2) to develop cleaner, more efficient renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, that don't spew more mercury and other hazardous pollutants into our air and water.
In other words, we have a responsibility to all Utahns to do better. We can and we should.
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Tim Wagner is conservation coordinator for the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he directs the Utah Smart Energy Campaign.
