News Coverage
Mercury debate energized in Illinois town
Published February 21, 2004
ZION, Ill. - It's not the fear of a smokestack spewing two pounds of mercury into the air over Lake Michigan that has Sandra deBruyn eating meat and potatoes these days.
She stopped serving her family fish even before town officials here sought permits to operate a sludge-burning sewage plant. DeBruyn's childhood memories of grilling bushels of smelt hooked from the lake are lost on her children.
Lake Michigan is one of thousands of U.S. water sources under state fish consumption advisories. The reason: Mercury pollution generated by 421 coal-burning power plants, sewage incinerators and other belchers of industrial smog. The United States emits 150 tons of mercury every year. At any given time, about 4,500 tons of mercury is circulating worldwide.
When that mercury rains to earth, it is digested by plant-eating fish and converted biologically into methyl mercury, a toxin more poisonous than lead. Larger fish eat the plant-eating fish, storing higher levels of methyl mercury in their tissues.
When one of those larger fish - or any fish - appears on your dinner plate, mercury is served up along with the fries and coleslaw.
Once considered a staple of a healthy diet, fish is now suspect.
Controversial topic
That's why the debate in deBruyn's hometown resonates, even as the mayor, Lane Harrison, promises to keep mercury emissions from the proposed $40 million incinerator down to just two pounds instead of the 92 pounds originally projected.
The hardscrabble town sold much of its landfill acreage in anticipation of the incinerator, and Harrison expects the project to dress up a desolate swath of Zion and attract light industry.
Critics of replacing landfills with incinerators say no amount of new business would be worth the health risks of sending more mercury into the air.
"The only policies being made today should lead to the reduction of this toxin, not permitting more of it," said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.
In speeches that sound like rallying cries, former Vice President Al Gore has called mercury "the arsenic of 2004." And mercury pollution has the Food and Drug Administration rethinking its endorsement of a low-fat, high-protein food.
The agency now warns pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children not to eat more than 12 ounces of fish each week - about two servings - and to completely avoid eating larger fish like king mackerel, swordfish, tilefish and shark.
"We know far and away that fish is the single largest source of mercury" in people, said David Acheson, the FDA director of food safety and security. "You have to address the balance between the good side and bad side of fish. Mercury is something to avoid and yet the nutrients of fish are something to consume."
Studies show canned tuna also has relatively high levels of methyl mercury that could harm fetuses and children and cause memory loss and tremors in adults.
Government priorities
But the FDA has decided to leave staples like canned tuna alone and focus on the fish world's biggest mercury threats. Critics say the FDA is cowed by big industry, but Acheson said the decision is based on common sense.
"The general advice is to eat a balanced diet, and fish is part of a balanced diet," he said. "I'm not saying labeling (canned tuna) is off the table, it's just not something the FDA considers to be the best strategy right now."
The Harvard School of Public Health reported this month that methyl mercury can weaken the heartbeat and cause irreversible brain damage in fetuses and children.
No fish containing any level of mercury is entirely safe to eat, said Jane Hightower of the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. But that doesn't stop her from mixing fish into her diet.
"Rotate your poisons," advised Hightower, a physician who believes mercury is just one mix in society's toxic cocktails.
Three years ago, Hightower studied the long-term effects of fish consumption on 123 patients and concluded that the "other shoe is about to drop." Medicine's practice of prescribing seafood diets to heart patients for fish's omega-3 fatty acids could backfire, she said.
Acheson said the FDA is not convinced that methyl mercury threatens the heart. Other studies published last year failed to make a definitive connection, he said, so the FDA continues to tout the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.
"We feel right now that the best public health message to get out is to get the benefits of fish and avoid the harm," he said. In other words, eat it in moderation.
Futile stand?
It's advice that Verena Owens took to heart several years ago. Her four sons don't eat fish from the pristine waters that abut their Lake County, Ill., home two miles north of Zion.
Owens, clean air coordinator for the Lake County Conservation Alliance, is among the 1,000 people protesting Zion's sludge incinerator.
Several public hearings with town officials and the state EPA resulted in crowded, noisy debates, she said, and the fenced lot reserved for the sewage plant remains empty. The EPA is expected to rule on the matter this spring.
Regardless of what the EPA decides regarding Zion's high-tech sludge incinerator, the standoff will do little to clean the town's air. About half of all mercury emitted into the air worldwide is inorganic and travels 100 to 200 miles. The other half - a less soluble elemental mercury - can travel for a year or longer and traverse the globe before falling.
Lake Michigan is just as likely to be bathed in the unregulated emissions of China and India.
"We first have to deal with our issues and make sure we are not polluting," said Harold Rafson, a retired Lake County engineer. "The kinds of (policy) we adopt now affects the future - my grandchildren, your children. We have to move toward improvement."