From FossilAgenda.com
As we were preparing dinner this evening, my wife asked me if I had read the New York Times article about mercury. "Do you know where the mercury in fish comes from?" she asked. "You know it comes from coal, right?"
I laughed.
But not for long.
I searched for the article and found this bracing reality check from Mark Bittman, a NYT food columnist.
He links to the absolutely frightening (must-watch) video at the top of this post. It was the first time I had ever seen mercury-induced nerve damage. As I watched the nerve tissue wither, I thought of my kids.
"My God," I thought. "How could they?"
For decades, Big Coal has been poisoning everything that breathes and they know it. I guess so long as you call it "Clean coal...."
So here's the big picture:
Much of the mercury in our air and water originates from coal-fired power-plants.
That coal we're burning was created naturally, over millions of years, from the buried remains of ancient forests. At the same time, small amounts of naturally occurring background levels of mercury was buried too. As coal formed, it integrated the mercury collected over those millions of years.
While the coal.sat undisturbed, the accumulated ancient mercury was safely locked away underground and atmospheric levels remained low. For millions of years, that's what happened..
Then humans began burning coal.
In 2011, we burnt over 7,000,000,000 tons of it according to World Coal Association, an industry advocate group. Every year, hundreds of tons of mercury billow from smokestacks around the world before settling in our neighborhoods, rivers, lakes and oceans.
It's getting worse. Here's Bittman again:
You could, of course, eat less big fish, but there are other sources of mercury: increasingly, it’s being found in vegetables and especially grains like rice that are grown near older, and even no longer functioning, coal-burning plants.
The good news: The EPA has promulgated regulations reducing allowable mercury emissions.
Bittman explains an additional benefit of the EPA rules: the same technology that removes mercury from the smokestack will also capture many other toxic pollutants. Emissions of arsenic, chromium, nickel and fine particulates, among others, will be significantly reduced. According to an analysis done as part of the rule making process, cleaner air will provide benefits worth $90 billion annually while saving 11,000 lives every year.
I'm guessing I don't need to tell you that power companies and coal operators (including Peabody) are mounting a major court challenge. So, I'm left asking again:
My God. How could they?