Toxins in Your Dinner? Mercury Threatens Our Health

Mike Leavitt, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency

I am dismayed that the EPA is not doing more to protect the public from mercury pollution. We can and should clean up mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants.

The EPA’s own scientists recently released an analysis estimating that 630,000 infants born in the US each year are at risk of irreversible harm from mercury exposure in the womb. And, almost every state has now issued advisories warning people, especially women and children, to avoid or limit eating local fish because of mercury. Advisories also warn America’s 41 million recreational anglers that the fish they catch may not be safe to eat. Like pregnant women and children, subsistence fishermen remain at high risk from the effects of mercury-tainted fish.

The EPA should not delay the relief our children and communities need from exposure to toxic power plant pollution. The risks to the health of future generations of Americans, and the associated costs that will be borne by our families and communities, far outweigh the reasonable cost of prevention to utilities.