Conscious Choice: Mercury Pollution Is No Fun

July 2005 | Editor’s Note

Mercury Pollution Is No Fun

Poor George Bush. Those A-student science types just won’t give this former C student a break. They keep bothering him with all those complicated global warming charts and reports.

And they keep coming out with all those warnings about chemicals that are just so hard to pronounce. They take the fun outta’ everything. Remember mercury: Those little silver liquid-like balls we all used to play with on our desktops in science class? Well, now those brainy ones are even ruining that by pointing out that when mercury mixes in the atmosphere and reacts with land, water and micro-organisms it forms something called methylmercury, a highly toxic substance that causes brain damage. Brain damage! I mean, can’t a guy just help out a few friends without someone claiming that the smoke coming out of their coal-burning plants can cause brain damage to children and the unborn?

Eating fish contaminated with mercury is how it gets into our food chain and brains. Who wants to eat fish anyway? Except, of course, pregnant women who eat it because fish contains all those beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids.

So the people who are most at risk for mercury poisoning aren’t even born yet, for crying out loud. Let them get born, and then they can complain. Provided they aren’t too impaired. Heck, a little mercury could go a long way to get rid us of all those smarty-pants. Then we all won’t have to listen to them spouting off about how they have already developed technology to clean up most of those emissions from the state’s coal plants that account for most of the mercury emissions that have affected just about every state waterway, including Lake Michigan. Who wants to bother with actually cleaning up most of the pollution when you can revert to Bush’s solution instead?

No one seems to understand that Bush is just trying to lighten everything up by reverting to his baseball owner days in solving this whole mercury problem with the familiar baseball terms of caps and trades.

His “cap and trade” mercury program allows the big energy companies to figure this out among themselves by turning it into one big trade fest. Now they can pay off each other to pollute in each other’s backyards. Besides, the backyards that will probably end up with the most pollution are in the poor neighborhoods where it’s already dirty with toxic hotspots that no one on the “right” side of town wants.

But did this fun baseball solution satisfy those serious science types? NO. What did they do? Well, right here in Illinois they accused Bush of dropping the mercury ball and are moving the local game to Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office.

At a joint press conference, Environmental Law & Policy Center Executive Director Howard Learner said Blagojevich has the power to instruct the Illinois Pollution Control Board to set stricter mercury standards. That way we could make sure our state doesn’t become a dumping ground for the rest of the nation’s mercury.

Learner’s group also produced statistics from studies that concluded up to 637,000 American children experience reductions in intelligence each year due to mercury pollution.

Jeez! If you go around quoting stats like that you can understand why Bush might not want to invite you to any of his parties. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Dr. Helen Binns, of the Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, kept talking about how methylmercury causes “intellectual impairment and fine motor function” problems that are “irreversible”.

And State Rep. Karen May (D-58), chairwoman of the House Environmental Health Committee, said she isn’t satisfied with stopping at the coal-burning plants. She made an unsuccessful attempt at getting the state legislature to pass a bill that would prevent the release of mercury used in auto switches of vehicles that are being junked. Mercury apparently isn’t used in the new switches, but May said there’s enough in the old ones to pollute half of Lake Michigan.

She did manage to help create a new Illinois Children’s Environmental Health Office.

But don’t worry. Even if they get smart people in there, only a few lawmakers will probably pay attention to them. It would be a shame to mess up everyone’s fun by actually doing the intelligent thing.

— Marla Donato

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