Protect Lake Michigan News

As mercury-rulemaking culminates, ad campaign highlights power plant mercury pollution's toxic impacts on developing children's memory and cognition

CHICAGO, Illinois—Culminating a two-year campaign to build public awareness of the danger and extent of power plant mercury pollution in Illinois, and with two upcoming votes on the proposed rule to reduce this pollution, Environment Illinois today launched an advertising campaign highlighting mercury's toxic impact on children's and fetus's neurological development.

"Mercury pollution is a potent neurotoxin and clear and present danger to healthy children" said Max Muller, Environmental Advocate at Environment Illinois. "These ads are a call to action to Illinois parents—and future parents—to tell policy makers they want power plants to clean up this toxin."

When a pregnant mother eats contaminated fish, methylmercury can cross the placenta to cause irreparable damage to the developing fetus's central nervous system, resulting in developmental delays, motor, memory, and attention problems, and decreased IQ. Nationally, U.S. EPA researchers estimate that up to one in six potential mothers—including over 100,000 women in Illinois—has high enough blood-mercury levels to put a fetus at risk.

Noting that children's intelligence losses due to mercury exposure last a lifetime, scientists at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine last year estimated the value of lost productivity due power plant mercury pollution's cognitive impacts at $1.3 billion annually. "This significant toll threatens the economic health and security of the United States and should be considered in the debate on mercury pollution controls," wrote the researchers.

While the Mt. Sinai study considered only mercury's cognitive effects, mercury also damages the human heart and immune system as well as reproduction in animals. Another study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which considered mercury's human heart and life expectancy impacts, estimated the value of reducing power plant mercury pollution at up to $5.2 billion annually.

Eating tainted fish is the dominant route of human exposure to mercury. When power plant mercury lands in waterways, bacteria convert it to methylmercury, a particularly potent neurotoxin which accumulates in fish. In April, Environment Illinois issued a report finding that the average Illinois sport fish tested in 36 Illinois counties, 66 individual lakes and streams, and 16 fish species exceeds the U.S. EPA safe limit for a woman of average weight who eats fish twice per week. The Illinois Department of Health warns women and children to limit their consumption of fish from all Illinois waters.

Illinois's fleet of twenty-one coal-fired power plants emits more than 71 percent of in-state mercury pollution. Available technologies can capture 90 percent of this mercury pollution before it leaves the smokestack. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency estimates the cost of installing this technology to be less than one percent of utility industry revenues. The Illinois Mercury Rule would require coal-fired power plants to begin operating these technologies by 2009.

“With mercury already contaminating fish in every body of water in the state, it’s high time we addressed this problem at the source,” said Muller. “We can clean up mercury pollution for less than the price of a cup of coffee per household per month. Illinois is on the right track with this rule.”

Children's health and environmental advocates have made adoption of the Illinois Mercury Rule a top priority. Over fifty such organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians, and the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition, have called for Illinois to adopt the rule. Additionally, at least eleven daily newspapers have editorialized in favor of the rule.

The two print ads, which feature, respectively, a boy learning to ride a bicycle and a girl in a spelling bee, point out that children face enough challenges in their lifetimes without the negative health impacts of power plant mercury pollution. The ads will run this week in daily newspapers in several large Illinois media markets. They are also on display this September on Chicago Transit Authority trains and on a popular Illinois news website.

Rulemaking on the Illinois Mercury Rule, proposed by Governor Blagojevich in January, began in March when Illinois EPA's submitted a draft rule to the Illinois Pollution Control Board (IPCB) for consideration. The IPCB received over 6000 public comments supportive of the mercury rule—a likely record—before closing public comment last week. Those comments will be added to the official record on which the IPCB will base its vote on whether to adopt the rule, a vote which is expected in October.

Shortly thereafter, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will also review the rule and, unless two-thirds of the committee's twelve members vote against it, the rule will become law.

To view the ads, click here.