Re: Sweden nuke thread vs. Mercury in coal airborne impacts

[RadiumProj@cs.com]

In a message dated 8/8/00 6:39:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, schoenho@via.at 
writes:

> Stewart, 
>  
>  While I agree with your posting, I respectfully disagree with fuel
>  combustion as the only source for mercury water pollution. If I remember
>  correctly, it was in the 70's, when the mercury poisoning of lakes was
>  detected and warnings for consumption were issued. The source of mercury
>  was the paper industry. Mercury was used to prevent microbial growth during
>  the process of paper making and was washed out into the rivers and lakes.
==========
Dear Franz:

A bit of a clarification on atmospheric mercury and the pollution of streams, 
rivers, and lakes is necessary to appreciate what is occurring with mercury 
in coal. You are correct that in the late 1960s and for a time thereafter, 
mercury discharges from the paper industry and certain chemical manufacturing 
[like chloralkalai plants]  was a recognized source of mercury pollution, but 
however only on a local basis. "Local" meaning streams, rivers and nearby 
areas impacted by waterborne discharges from specific industrial 
manufacturing. This local impact is why mercury pollution of fish affecting 
humans is sometimes referred to as "Minamata Bay Disease" after the tragic 
case where a large group of  a local Japanese fishing village [hundreds of 
individuals including some of their offspring affected by neurological damage 
and teratogenic effects of organomercurials ] eating fish and aquatic life 
from Minamata Bay,  in Japan suffered horrible health impacts due to mercury 
in fish traced to discharges of mercury from  a local chemical company there 
discharging into the bay.

Sweden was a world  leader in working out analytical techniques on mercury in 
fish and in carrying out early environmental research of the mercury 
contamination discovered in the environment there in the 1960s.

 However, it was only a few years into the 1970s that airborne mercury was 
widely recognized as the problem in contamination of remote Swedish mountain 
lakes completely out of the influence of any direct liquid discharges into 
waterways from any industrial operation. The only potential source was 
airborne. Mercury in coal is not the only source of airborne mercury [also 
incinerators which used to burn mercury containing alkaline batteries which we
re high in mercury, but this use  of Hg and the HG concentration in batteries 
has been reduced dramatically]. However, the mass of coal being burned and 
the trace mercury contamination of coal with mercury [less than 1 ppm to up 
to 30 ppm, typically a ppm or so] makes coal burning the major contributor to 
Hg releases today into the environment. A single 1000 MWe coal plant burning 
6 million tons of coal a year will release 6 tons of mercury into the air at 
1 ppm of mercury in coal.

There is  also a basic underlying mechanism at work related to conventional 
air pollution components other than mercury,  and the long-term effects of 
sulfur dioxide and other acids in conventional air pollution specifically, 
that aggravates the mercury problem in lakes across northern Europe and the 
northern US and southern Canada.  It has been discovered that the long-term 
effects of "acid rain" on many bodies of water has been that it has changed 
the buffering capacity of lakes such that the acidity changes.  Different 
bacteria have begun to populate the sediments of these acid  impacted lakes 
which are much more efficient at biomethylating inorganic mercurials which 
have accumulated in sediments from airborne deposition from 100 years and 
more of coal burning, and any natural levels of Hg bound in sediments.  Once 
the inorganic mercury which is essentially bound [i.e.: locked up]  in the 
sediments is converted to methyl and ethyl mercury, these newly created 
organomercurials effectively shoot up the food chain concentrating in each 
trophic level so that the fish end up contaminated at unsafe levels with 
organomercurials making it unfit for human and unsafe for animal upper level 
predators as well. To be clear there is no problems with mercury pollution of 
the water which is trivial, but only the final levels in fish or predators 
eating fish. 

 Mercury pollution of fish in large numbers of lakes in Sweden and northern 
Europe [ and the northern US, southern Canada, and even the Florida 
Everglades] is a real problem today that is not going to go away, especially 
if more coal is burned as is the trend. In the US coal burning topped 1 
billion tons a year a few years ago. At 1 ppm of Hg in coal this annual coal 
combustion equals 1,000 tons of mercury being discharged into the US air. 
What goes up comes down and the widespread mercury contamination resulting 
does not decay. Mercury as an element does not offer the advantage of 
radioactive decay to eliminate it from the environment. Unless locked up in 
billions of tons of coal undergroud, if can be truly said that "Mercury is 
Forever" in the pristine lakes into which it is being introduced.

This is not an academic issue. Juvenile bald eagles raised as chicks and 
eating fish from Quabbin reservoir in Massachusetts were found back in 1988, 
after leaving Quabbin,  to be staggering around upstate New York with 
neurological damage so severe they had to be sacrificed. These birds had been 
banded as part of a bald eagle nesting program, so US Fish & Wildlife knew 
they had just flown away from Quabbin. When Quabbin was subsequently tested 
as to its food supply the mercury levels in fish were found to  so high that 
its  eagle community was being poisoned. At the time, then Gov. Dukakis of 
Massachusetts was opposing and holding  up the licensing of the Seabrook 
Nuclear Plant just over the Massachusetts border in New Hampshire by refusing 
to participate in E. Planning requirements. Accordingly, the state of Mass. 
kept this problem with mercury in Quabbin, the main water supply for Boston 
very quite and dragged its feet on conducting sediment surveys to determine 
the source of mercury contamination. In 1988, the Massachusetts' Dept. of 
Public Health tried to suggest  that the problems with mercury pollution of 
fish in Quabbin was most likely due to an old felt factory dump flooded when 
Quabbin was formed in the 1930s, and never raised the issue of airborne 
mercury from coal burning in power generation as a source.  Felt making in 
the 1800s used mercury compounds. Remember the "Mad Hatter" in Alice in 
Wonderland.  Hatters at the time suffered brain damage in handling felt 
containing mercury compounds. The was in which mercury pollution of Quabbin 
Reservoir was handled by Gov. Dukakis is another example of politics over 
public health.

It was politically correct in Massachusetts under Gov.  Dukakis, a 
doctrinaire anti-nuke and professed "environmentalist" to oppose a nuclear 
plant like Seabrook, but not politically correct to talk about mercury 
pollution from coal burning killing American bald eagles from Quabbin 
Reservoir. Environmental stewardship? Hardly. Environmentalists like then 
Gov. Dukakis talk a good game but fall victim to their preconceived biases, 
dogma,  and the blinders they are wearing from truly protecting the 
environment from degradation.

Even upper level predators, like panthers in the Florida Everglades are  
suffering reproductive failure due to mercury pollution there from eating 
raccoons which eat fish which are high in mercury due to air pollution from 
coal burning. If mercury contamination in fish in pristine lakes, not subject 
to liquid discharges from any mercury pollution in industrial manufacturing, 
can poison a bald eagle and affect reproduction in an upper level predator 
like the American Panther in the Everglades it can and is affecting humans 
today eating fish.

This problem is especially severe in parts of Canada where indigenous native 
populations rely on fish as a major part of their food supply. Mercury has 
turned up at unsafe levels in their fish due to long-distance air transport 
of pollution from coal burning in the US to their west. "Environmental 
racism" is a word coined  by some environmental groups and adopted by the US 
EPA. It is generally thought to be a problem impacting poor people forced to 
live next door to an incinerator, or some source of industrial pollution 
which is felt to impact their health.  However, with mercury,  a Canadian 
Indian living in a pristine area, living off the local fish supply, is now a 
victim of "Environmental racism" due to coal burning at power plants in Ohio 
or the Four Corners of Utah,  or steel mills in Illinois and the transport 
and deposition of mercury and acid in their lakes and bodies of water which 
is at unsafe levels in their fish.

At some point the facts on real  environmental impacts of coal vs. nuclear 
have to reach the public and key decisionmakers. However, this is unlikely to 
happen until nuclear technologies get their story out,  and reach a point to 
use the great phrase from the movie "Network": "I'm mad as hell and not going 
to take it anymore."


Stewart Farber, MSPH [Air Pollution Control UMASS '73]
Public Health Sciences
email: radiumproj@cs.com


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