Reply #5: It really smells like the coal industry's hands are in this... Consider RFK Jr's comments...

[cascadiance]

... on mercury poisoning that is so much a problem with fish these days, largely due to our mining of coal, etc. without any real effective oversight to keep mercury poisoning from getting into our fresh water supplies.

From:

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/speeches/2005-09-10rfkjr.asp

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s speech

at the Sierra Summit, September 10, 2005

The following is a transcript of a speech by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the Sierra Club's National Convention and Expo on September 10, 2005 in San Francisco. Kennedy received the Sierra Club's William O. Douglas Award on behalf of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

...A couple of months ago, EPA announced that in 19 states it is now unsafe to eat any freshwater fish in the state mercury contamination. We know where the mercury is coming from -- those same coal-burning power plants. In 48 states, at least some of the fish are unsafe to eat. In fact, the only two states where all of the fish are still safe to eat are Alaska and Wyoming, where Republican-controlled legislatures have refused to appropriate the money to test the fish. In all of the other states, at least some, most, or all of the fish are unsafe to eat.

We know a lot about mercury we didn't know a few years ago. We know for example, that one out of every six, now one out of every three, American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases: autism, blindness, mental retardation, heart, liver, kidney disease.

I have so much mercury in my body -- I had my level tested recently, and Waterkeeper will test your level, you can send them a hair sample -- my level is about double what the EPA considers safe. I was told by Dr. David Carpenter, who is the national authority on mercury contamination, that a woman with my levels of mercury in her blood would have children with impairment. I said to him, "You mean she might have," and he said, "No, the science is very certain today. Her children would have some kind of permanent brain damage." He estimated an IQ loss in those kids of about five to seven points.

Well, 630,000 children are born in America every year who have been exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in their mother's wombs. President Clinton, recognizing the gravity of this national health epidemic, reclassified mercury as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act. That triggered the requirement that all of those companies remove 90 percent of the mercury within three and a half years. It would have cost less than one percent of plant revenue -- a great deal for the American people. We have the technology. It exists. We already require it in states like Massachusetts.

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