Toxins in Your Dinner? Mercury Threatens Our Health
Did you know you could be serving toxic mercury for dinner? That's right. Mercury, a dangerous toxin emitted from coal-fired power plants, is deposited in streams, lakes, and rivers, where it accumulates in fish - fish we eat. Instead of quickly cleaning toxic power plant pollution, the Bush AdministrationÂ’s mercury emissions plan would save billions for corporate polluters while putting the health of millions of Americans at risk, especially children and women. DonÂ’t let the Bush Administration get away with leaving a mercury-laden legacy.
We need to reduce this serious public health problem. The technology to clean up polluting power plants is available and cost-effective. By using available technology annual mercury pollution from power plants could be reduced from 48 tons today, to just 5 tons by 2008.
One in five women have unhealthy mercury levels in her blood that threaten the neurological development of more than 600,000 newborns every year. Neurological damage caused by mercury exposure is irreversible. And, we know mercury is toxic.
Tell the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bush Administration to clean it up! Sign the petition today.
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.
