Mercury

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.

A three-judge panel unanimous struck down a mercury-control plan imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency three years ago. It established an emissions trading process in which some plants could avoid installing the best mercury control technology available by buying pollution credits.

Environmentalist and health experts argued that such a cap-and-trading mechanism would create “hot spots” of mercury contamination near some power plants. Seventeen states as well as environmental and health groups joined in a suit to block the regulation, saying it did not adequately protect public health.

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This is good news. While a cap-and-trade system might be ok to use to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, mercury is far too nasty to show that sort of leniency towards. While a broken thermometer (100 mg or less) or fluorescent bulb (5 milligrams) isn't much, coal power plants emit this stuff by the ton. 48 tons/year in fact.

That's not to say broken thermometers and fluorescent bulbs should just be tossed in the trash. If it accumulates in any one spot, it has the potential to become a problem. But one doesn't need to call in the EPA to clean it up. There are procedures one should follow.

I used to work for a environmental testing lab and we handled mercury all the time. If a soil or water sample was contaminated with high levels of sulfur (which obscures the signal of the pesticides, herbicides, PCB's and other contaminants we were checking for), we would add mercury to the sample to react with the sulfur. We'd then extract the mercury from the sample and dispose of it in our mercury waste container. The amount of mercury we would need for any particular sample would be on the order of a few drops. If any spilled, we'd pipette it up. The fume hood picked up any vapors.

Remember the saying, "Mad as a hatter"? Mercury was once used to press the felt on hats. Unfortunately, people didn't wear gloves or have adequate ventilation back then so they absorbed the mercury through their skin and inhaled the vapors. Connecticut used to be the hat making capital in the US. Danbury was known as "Hat City." While the nickname continues to this day, the industry is long gone.

But back to coal. Since the US and China are going to continue to burn it for energy, it needs to be cleaned up. Coal gasification technology is already being used to strip out sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. It's about time that the regulations for new coal plants require mercury emissions, among other things, to be eliminated.

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