What’s at Stake

Methylmercury is highly toxic, adversely affecting reproduction, the cardiovascular system and, especially, the brain and central nervous system. Methylmercury travels through the placenta and breast milk to disrupt and permanently alter the developing brain and central nervous system of the young.

• Children exposed to low or moderate levels of methylmercury risk: delayed walking, delayed speech, and decreased fine motor function, language, visual-spatial abilities and memory. Higher doses of methylmercury during fetal development can cause small head circumference, severe mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, and seizures.
  
  
• All of our state’s major rivers and our largest lakes have fish advisories due to high levels of mercury.
  
  
• We have large sources of mercury—coal power plants are the largest—and our blackwater rivers are especially efficient at converting elemental mercury into methylmercury, a form easily absorbed by fish and the humans who eat them.
  
  
• Last year, the Charleston Post & Courier conducted testing that showed citizens having mercury levels at eight times the recommended health levels in the Pee Dee region of SC. Challenges

Challenges

Studies show that controlling local emissions reduces mercury pollution. In Massachusetts, state mercury pollution reductions correlated with declining mercury levels in fish, while in Florida local controls led to substantial declines in fish tissue mercury levels, “delivering dramatic results in our lifetime.”

• SC industries must take the initiative to reduce mercury emissions.
  
  
• An EPA-sponsored study of mercury deposition in Steubenville, Ohio showed that approximately “70 percent of Hg [mercury] wet deposition” at the testing site was attributable to local and regional coal and oil combustion.
  
  
• Those results corroborate federal studies showing that U.S. coal-fired power plants are the primary source of mercury in the Great Lakes, and that local coal-fired power plants contribute the most mercury to the Chesapeake Bay.

Next Steps

• Direct DHEC to test citizens for mercury exposure. (DHEC has expensive testing equipment but is not using it.)
  
  
• Direct DHEC to require that ALL mercury sources in the state use the maximum available control technology.
  
  
• Direct DHEC to post mercury warning signs at ALL boat ramps and fishing spots where mercury levels in fish are too high for safe human consumption.

Fast Facts

The US EPA estimated in 2002 that it would cost power plants less than 1% of their annual revenue to reduce mercury emissions by 80-90%.

South Carolina is considered one of the mercury pollution "hotspots" of the country,
 17 of 41 people who regularly eat freshwater fish were found to have high levels of methylmercury.

Fear of mercury poisoning threatens the popularity of recreational marine fishing trips in SC, which contributed over $550 million to the state’s economy in 2002.   

If rule changes prevail, new targets ensure an additional 328 tons of mercury will be released into the air by U.S. plants between 2008 and 2018.

For more information, Blan Holman, SELC, 843-720-5270

Links

Clean Energy for South Carolina

US Geological Survey: Mercury in the Environment Fact Sheet