Map showing the locations of Illinois' coal-burning power plants:
Toxic mercury from power plant smokestacks can cause serious health damage.
The old, coal-burning power plants in Illinois are still allowed to spew more than 7,000 pounds of mercury into the air each year.
Mercury ends up in our lakes and streams and makes the fish unsafe to eat.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, children, pregnant women, nursing mothers or women who may become pregnant should not eat fish from any body of water in Illinois including Lake Michigan.
One in every six children born in the U.S. has already been exposed to unsafe levels of mercury in the womb.
Requiring all coal-fired power plants in Illinois to use modern emission controls for mercury could eliminate 90 percent of the mercury emissions in Illinois.