The Washington Post, NA
Published December 20, 2003
IN RECENT WEEKS, the hazardous chemical mercury has appeared in newspaper headlines at least four times. Earlier this autumn, Ballou High School had to be evacuated after a student stole mercury from a chemistry lab and spread it around the school. Just this week, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Mike Leavitt, proposed to change the way his agency regulates mercury emissions, which could mean power plants will be allowed to spew more mercury longer. The agency then issued new rules to regulate the chemical industry's handling of mercury as well, conceding that it is "not feasible" either to determine how much mercury the industry really is emitting or to enforce tougher standards. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a draft advisory hinting that it may be dangerous for pregnant women and children to eat certain fish that contain mercury, but it wasn't entirely clear about which fish are the worst offenders.
What do all of these incidents have in common? The answer is nothing -- and that is precisely the problem. Official attitudes toward mercury, a chemical known to cause severe neurological and developmental damage, now vary dramatically. Of the three recent examples, only one is consistent: Only the District, that is, treated mercury as a dangerous poison and reacted to news of a spill with full disclosure and a comprehensive cleanup.
By contrast, the EPA's actions are ambiguous and follow a long, bipartisan tradition of ambiguous decisions about mercury. Since the Clean Air Act was reauthorized in 1990, the agency has been bogged down in a long regulatory process, managing to cut mercury emissions from municipal and medical incinerators but not from the power plants that have lobbied successfully against the installation of expensive equipment. The EPA now says its new policy -- to remove mercury from lawsuit-prone Clean Air Act rules and make it part of an emissions trading program -- will actually prove more effective, given the current state of technology and given its assessment of when the litigious energy industry might realistically be expected to comply with more stringent rules. Unfortunately, neither the agency nor this administration has an impressive track record on this issue, which makes it difficult to believe that either is sincere.
The fact that the rule change regarding chemical plants was accompanied by an admission -- that the EPA cannot account for at least 65 tons of mercury that may be released into the atmosphere every year -- does not increase the agency's credibility. The FDA's actions aren't much clearer. The agency has announced, in effect, that eating some fish -- including tuna, swordfish and shark -- might be bad for pregnant women and others who should avoid consuming mercury, but has kept silent on other fish, such as albacore tuna, that are thought to have high mercury levels as well. If this lack of clarity reflects a lack of knowledge, it might be better not to issue any warnings at all. If it reflects a desire to protect particular fishing industries, it's unacceptable. Generally speaking, agency warnings -- particularly in the case of foods such as fish, usually touted as healthy -- ought to contain all the information the agency possesses.
It's not as if this isn't possible. In fact, the EPA, which is responsible for measuring mercury levels in fish harvested from the wild, has been very good about giving precise, regional recommendations on levels of mercury in particular fish. The FDA should use the same standard. Or maybe both federal agencies should take a lesson from the District: Determine what is really hazardous, be clear about it, resist pressure to hush it up -- and then get the cleanup going.
