• Fouling the food chain Fouling the food chain Last week, the Bush administration circulated a proposed rule that would let coal-fired power plants continue spewing toxic mercury into the atmosphere for decades. This week, the administration released a proposed
• Fouling the food chain
Fouling the food chain
Last week, the Bush administration circulated a proposed rule that would let coal-fired power plants continue spewing toxic mercury into the atmosphere for decades.
This week, the administration released a proposed warning that women of childbearing age and young children limit the amount of tuna they eat because of its unhealthy mercury content.
Administration apologists argue the two actions are unrelated. Much of the mercury that ends up in tuna and other large game fish, particularly those caught in the Pacific Ocean, comes from foreign sources, they say. That overlooks an essential point. For decades, we’ve known about the harmful effects of mercury, in part through an epidemic of brain damage, seizures and serious illnesses among families of fishermen living on Japan’s Minamata Bay during the 1950s. The fish they ate were poisoned by industrial discharge of mercury into the bay. Yet even after that devastating lesson, we continue to discharge mercury into the air, contaminating lakes, streams and coastal fisheries.
At least 44 states – including Missouri and Illinois, which warn against eating largemouth bass over 12 inches long – advise limiting consumption of certain fish from local rivers and lakes. A 1997 report by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that two-thirds of the mercury deposited in this country comes from U.S. sources.
Thanks to the Bush administration’s industry-friendly proposal, that will continue. The new rules will take effect in 2010. And because they allow companies to buy and sell the right to discharge mercury, they’ll allow toxic “hot spots” downwind of coal-burning power plants to persist.
The Food and Drug Administration’s tuna warning is long overdue. It had already advised pregnant women and young children against eating shark, swordfish and some other large ocean fish that contain high mercury levels. But it remained silent on tuna, long the country’s best-selling fish. However, the rule should be more nuanced; albacore and tuna steaks contain much more mercury than canned “light” tuna.
It made sense for the FDA to finally issue its tuna warning. It would make even more sense for the government to keep as much mercury as possible out of the food chain.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
