By Neela Banerjee

December 21, 2011, 10:35 a.m.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday announced a tough new rule to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxic substances from sources such as power plants, a landmark measure that could prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Though mercury is a known neurotoxin that can be profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women, there has never been a federal rule setting a standard for its release into the air from power plants. The current rule has been more than 20 years in the making, stymied repeatedly by objections from coal-burning utilities — the biggest source of mercury and other acid gases — and about the cost of installing pollution-control equipment.

The new regulation does not differ markedly in its rigorous emissions targets and timetable from a draft rule proposed in March, despite fierce lobbying to change it. It gives utilities three years to install pollution control equipment called scrubbers, with the opportunity for extensions from regulators on a case-by-case basis.

The rule follows on the heels of several Obama administration decisions to shelve environmental standards to mollify a sharply critical business community, including a high-profile decision this summer to halt new standards to cut smog. The long-awaited rule governing air toxins is sure to rile powerful utilities and their congressional allies who have doggedly lobbied the administration over the last few weeks to weaken or delay the standards.

Said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement: “The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance.”

Environmentalists applauded the step as a historic leap in efforts to curtail air pollution. “We can breathe easier today,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in an emailed statement. “Dirty coal-fired power plants will have to clean up the toxic soup of emissions that is polluting our air and making people sick, especially children. This critical update to the Clean Air Act will reduce child developmental delays, asthma attacks, heart attacks, and cancer; and save tens of thousands of lives.”

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry lobbying group, said the sweeping implications of the new rule mean that utilities would not accept them easily.

Under the new rule, power plants can emit 1.2 pounds of mercury per million BTUs of energy produced. Industry had sought a limit of 1.4 pounds. But the EPA arrived at its figure based on a formula set out under the Clean Air Act, and analysts said the agency could not deviate from it.

“The final rule appears to be pretty close to the proposed rule, which is unfortunate. The rule suffers from statistical errors, inaccurate technological assumptions, and inadequate economic and reliability analysis. Given that the rule is one of the most expensive air rules ever, the American public deserves better.”

Companies would have three years to clean up their emissions of mercury and about 70 other toxic substances, and utilities could appeal for at least one more year as they install the necessary equipment. Much of industry has argued that the timetable is too tight and could lead to rolling blackouts. One group, the American Public Power Assn., told the White House that its members needed more than seven years to comply with the mercury rule.

About a dozen states have already approved rules to cut mercury and other toxic substances. A recent study by air quality regulators in the Northeast showed that Massachusetts’ aggressive efforts since 1998 to reduce mercury emissions have slashed emissions by more than 90%. Industry has argued that the health benefits of reducing mercury through a federal standard are overstated.

But the estimated public health effects had played a considerable role so far in getting the administration to stick to standards it proposed in March, environmentalists said. Power plants account for about half of mercury emissions and more than 70% of acid gases.

People get exposed to mercury mainly by eating contaminated fish. Mercury exposure damages the developing brains of fetuses and children.

The EPA estimates that by 2016, the proposed rules could avert 4,700 heart attacks a year and prevent 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms.

First, Rabbi Daniel Swartz leaned toward the microphone at Tuesday’s hearing on proposed federal rules to limit mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

By allowing emissions to continue, “we have, in effect, subsidized the poisoning of fetuses and children,” the Scranton rabbi said.

Later came the Rev. Mitchell Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a national ministry. “We are hindering children from an abundant life . . . because we failed to clean up this terrible poison,” he said.

By the time Joy Bergey of Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church spoke, the EPA’s hearing officer, Rob Brenner, was curious.

Of all the rules he has worked on, he said, the religious and social-justice communities have shown the most interest in the mercury rule. Why?

“Because of the fact that it’s such clear science,” Bergey said. “This hurts babies. This hurts children. It is so clearly a question of moral responsibility.”

Tuesday’s hearing in Philadelphia was one of three nationwide this week. Participants spoke in five-minute segments, beginning at 9 a.m., with the hearing expected to last until 8 p.m. or later.

At least eight speakers represented religious groups. The environmental and medical community dominated the schedule.

“The American public has the right to clean air and clean water,” said Delaware County’s Robin Mann, Sierra Club national president.

“We must recognize that the effects of harmful air emissions ripple all the way to the most vulnerable members of our society,” said Poune Saberi, a family-medicine physician at the University of Pennsylvania.

Coal power is dominant in Pennsylvania, which has more than three dozen plants, and the state ranks high nationally for mercury emissions.

The agency proposed the rule in March. It would limit emissions of mercury. When it falls back to the ground and gets into waterways, it becomes the more toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish. People are exposed when they eat fish. The neurotoxin can harm the brains of fetuses and infants.

The rule also would limit emissions of other hazardous pollutants - arsenic, chromium, nickel, acid gases - that can cause serious health effects, including cancer.

The EPA has estimated that, by 2016, the rule would result in up to 17,000 premature deaths avoided. It also would cause tens of thousands fewer heart attacks, cases of chronic bronchitis, asthma events, and more.

EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson has said the rule would create jobs.

James W. Banford Jr., of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, predicted “job losses at utility plants, coal mines, and in the rail sector.”

Scott H. Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry group, said that the rule would be “the most expensive in EPA history” - costing about $11 billion a year - and that benefits were overstated.

Some in the industry support the rule.

Bruce Alexander, environmental regulatory strategy director with Exelon Corp., which has invested in clean generation, called the proposed rule “balanced, reasonable, and long overdue.”

“Some claim that the power industry is monolithic and that we all think that EPA has run amok,” he said. “That is simply not true.”

Likewise, Michael Bradley, executive director of the Clean Energy Group, a coalition of electric-power companies, said the proposed standards would provide the “certainty” the industry needed to move forward with capital-investment decisions.

Chris Salmi, assistant director of air quality for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said New Jersey has stricter standards, and he urged the federal agency to tighten regulations even more.

Pennsylvania had proposed mercury regulations, but they failed in a court challenge.

John Hanger, former secretary of the Pennsylvania DEP, said: “The benefits of this rule so far exceed the costs that suggesting otherwise is lunacy.”

Gretchen Alfonso, the Philadelphia mother of two children under age 2, said: “It makes me angry that, despite my best efforts at living a healthy lifestyle, my body, and my family’s, are being invaded by toxins from all angles.”

• Announcment Public hearings (PDF) (2pp, 186k) - Federal Register - April 28, 2011
• May 24: Chicago, Ill.
  Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro
  799 West Madison Street
  Chicago, Ill. 60611
  Preregistration deadline 5 p.m., May 19
• May 24: Philadelphia, Pa.
  Westin Philadelphia
  99 South 17th Street at Liberty Place
  Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
  Preregistration deadline 5 p.m., May 19
• May 26: Atlanta, Ga.
  Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
  61 Forsyth Street SW
  Atlanta, Ga. 30303-8960
  Preregistration deadline 5 p.m., May 23

The Sierra Club, which hosted Thursdays trims, is hosting 20 similar events near coal-fired plants across the country with hopes of demonstrating the dangerous spread of mercury.

The Clubs larger initiative, to expose the worst polluters, has developed a powerful map on its website, which tags coal-fired plants with skull & cross bones markers. The biggest offenders are highlighted in red.

Results of the hair samples take 3 weeks, but it will be interesting to see if the Sierra Club’s hypothesis proves true…

Read more and check out photos on the local Patch page.

The following article appeared here and is written by Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Levels of mercury have risen dramatically in some Pacific seabirds in the past 120 years, suggesting that industrial emissions containing the poisonous metal associated with fetal and brain damage may be climbing the food chain and endangering sensitive species, according to a new study.

While the study did not specifically address human-mercury exposure, there is rising concern among scientists that more people are consuming the heavy metal through tainted seafood, where the compound is known as methylmercury.

“It’s possible that any human populations that largely depend on the same marine sources (of food) may be exposed to more methylmercury and be at risk,” said study co-author Anh-Thu Vo, a doctoral student in integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

Vo’s paper, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, relied on 54 samples of breast feathers from the black-footed albatross, an endangered, dusky-brown bird that feeds and nests mainly in the northern Pacific. To measure the bird’s mercury concentrations historically, Vo gathered feathers dating from the 1880s to 2002 from museums at Harvard University and the University of Washington.

Through the food web

What Vo found indicates that mercury emissions from mineral mining and burning coal may be invading the birds through the food web. That is, microscopic organisms ingest mercury pollution in seawater. Those organisms are eaten by small fish, which are eaten by bigger fish, and so on, up to the seabirds. At each rung in the ladder, the mercury becomes more concentrated.

The study found mercury levels jumped in the albatross at the same time industrial production ramped up after World War II and again after 1990 when many Asian economies kicked into overdrive. Though the link between pollution and mercury accumulation merits further examination, researchers said, it suggests that modern human development is reverberating throughout the natural world and could imperil rare and dwindling species.

“We are starting to find high levels in endangered and sensitive species across marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, indicating that mercury pollution and its subsequent chemical reactions in the environment may be important factors in species population declines,” said study co-author Michael Bank, a research associate at Harvard’s School of Public Health.

Limiting intake

Mercury, both a commercial byproduct and a naturally occurring metal, is particularly damaging to the central nervous system and the reproductive process. For that reason, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warn that women of child-bearing age, nursing mothers and young children should completely avoid swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish and limit their intake of tuna.

Earlier this year, a public health advocacy group found that tuna and swordfish collected from California grocery stores and sushi restaurants contained mercury levels as much as three times the threshold that authorizes federal food regulators to pull seafood from shelves.

Biologists and scientists have lobbied the federal government to lower its warning level. But representatives for the seafood industry say the current threshold has a large buffer built into it. They also maintain that seafood is a critical part of a healthy diet and has rich omega-3 fatty acids that boost brain development.