Mercury: Coping with last major wayward toxin
By Sen. Patrick Leahy
The Hill - April 4, 2001
Mercury is an incredibly toxic substance. Mercury is so poisonous, in fact,
that just about a teaspoonful is enough to contaminate an entire lake. Yet
mercury is the last major toxic pollutant without a plan to control its spread
throughout our environment.
Our fragmented approach to mercury has focused mostly on its consequences,
once it is already unleashed in our air and water. Forty states have issue
warnings about eating certain types of freshwater fish from their lakes and
streams, including my home state of Vermont. But even keeping tabs on mercury
levels already in the environment has been a spotty effort. Years ago FDA
virtually stopped its own testing to gauge mercury levels in fish.
We need to pursue the mercury threat on two tracks. First, we need to do a
better job of testing and detection and giving the public credible information
about the mercury they encounter in their lives. Second, we need to stop
mercury pollution at its sources. As with other poisonous pollutants, the
time has come to focus as well on "upstream" solutions, to prevent the release
of mercury into the environment in the first place.
Last year we reached the end of the line in scientific policy guidance on
mercury when the prestigious National Academy of Sciences confirmed its
dangers. There are no more excuses to delay. It is time for Congress and the
Administration to act in documenting and then limiting the release of mercury
into our land and water.
This month Sen. Tom Harkin and I introduced the Mercury-Safe Seafood Act
(S.555), requiring FDA to adopt a stricter standard for mercury levels in
fish, to increase its consumer education efforts and to resume statistically
valid testing of mercury levels in fish. Our bill would also direct FDA to
consider the risks of mercury exposure to pregnant women and young children
and to acknowledge the scientific evidence showing the dangers of mercury when
updating its standards.
The scientific studies also point the way to solutions at the sources of
mercury pollution like the Omnibus Mercury Emissions Reduction Act that Sen.
Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and I introduced in 1998, and now by another
bipartisan plan, the new Clean Power Act of 2001. Soon I will reintroduce
the Clean Power Plant and Modernization Act, with the same goal but an
incentive-based approach to cutting emissions of mercury and other pollutants
into the air.
Eating mercury-contaminated seafood poses a risk of learning disabilities and
neurological problems in the children of pregnant women who eat the
contaminated fish. According to EPA, about 7 million women and children are
eating mercury-contaminated fish at or above the level the agency considers
safe. Preliminary research from the Centers for Disease Control found that
10 percent of American women could already be at risk from exposure to
dangerous levels of mercury. Just last summer the National Academy of
Sciences concluded that some 60,000 newborns may be at risk each year from
prenatal exposure to methylmercury. Even small doses can cause permanent
damage to developing brains and nervous systems. Just this month, the General
Accounting Agency confirmed that FDA has been slow to protect consumers from
methylmercury.
FDA's "action level" was intended to protect the public from consuming unsafe
amounts of mercury, especially in large species such as swordfish, shark and
tuna. But FDA does not actively enforce these standards. Throughout the
1990s, FDA found that some commercially available fish exceeded its action
level by as much as three times. Consumer Reports and ABC News recently
confirmed these results in independent tests. Yet the FDA stopped testing for
mercury in domestically caught seafood in 1998, even though earlier tests
showed significant numbers of fish were contaminated.
Not only is the FDA no longer testing for the existence of mercury in seafood,
but new information also indicates that the FDA action level, even if it were
enforced, is too high. The research has shown that pregnant women and
children are at risk when exposed to much lower levels of mercury than
previously thought. Three years ago EPA's Mercury Study Report to Congress
recommended an action level five times lower than the FDA standard. The
National Academy of Sciences confirmed this finding as well.
But there are encouraging signs. In January, FDA took an important step by
issuing an updated warning to pregnant women, nursing mothers and young
children against eating certain kinds of fish, which may contain high levels
of mercury.
Americans have a right to know about the dangers of mercury. And they have a
right to air, water, and fish free of the mercury pumped into our environment
from irresponsible power producers. For Congress, acting on The Mercury-Safe
Seafood Act is a good place to start.
