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November 07, 2005
How 'Bout A Nice Tall Glass of Mercury
Yoiks: A southern Idaho reservoir is contaminated with mercury at levels up to 180 times higher than those found in lakes in the northeast US. From the Idaho Statesman:
"Nobody's ever seen a hot spot like this before," said Mike DuBois, an air quality analyst at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.
The likely culprit: four gold mines across the border in northern Nevada, which emitted 15,000 pounds of mercury in 2002 alone. Of course, the mines are patting themselves on the back for reducing their mercury releases to just a couple of tons per year as of 2004. But that's still a huge amount of mercury for just a handful of mines. The 1,000-odd coal-fired electricity industry generators in the US emit a total of 48 tons of mercury each year; so those few Nevada mines make up a disproportionately large share of the nation's total mercury output.
And just in case you need a reason to care about this: mercury contamination early in life can knock a few points off a kid's IQ, which in addition to being grossly unfair, costs nearly $9 billion a year in lost earnings.
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Comments
Our 6th-grade class had a motto that I've always remembered. It was this simple yet profound question:
Is it worth it?
It seems that mankind's unhealthy obsession with gold is yet another case for asking this.
And afterall, aren't healthy water and clean air worth more than gold itself? These priceless and irreplaceable life-essentials are where our true investments should be.
Posted by: Michelle Parker | Nov 7, 2005 4:26:43 PM
A few IQ points are the least of the worries associated with mercury, kind of a weird thing to cite.
Posted by: anonymous | Nov 7, 2005 10:15:54 PM
Actually, most of the mercury hype is just that. Mercury is not a known carcinogen; knocking a few points off the IQ is about the worst damage is might do. And considering that Isaac Newton and many of the top 17th century scientists used to drink the stuff, it won't exactly cause you to drop dead.
Also, 2,900 nangrams per liter (the level they have found in Idaho) seems pretty high, right? It seems a little less high when you know just how tiny a nanogram is. A nanogram is a PART PER TRILLION - in other words, .0000000001 percent, to put it a more commonly used measure. 2,900 nanograms per liter is equivalent to 2.9 micrograms per liter or parts per billion. For a real world example, that's about equivalent to 3 drops of ink in a large tanker truck.
And like I said: Newton used to drink glasses of this stuff. And if you live in a house that's ever had a broken mercury thermometer--or if you break a flourescent light bulb--you'd probably have more exposure than from drinking this water.
I'm all for keeping our environment clean. But the recent hysteria about mercury--a natural elemental metal that's part of the earth without human intervention--is misplaced. There are worse environmental problems than this little stuff.
Posted by: Marjorie | Nov 8, 2005 7:54:09 AM
It's not elemental Hg that's the problem.
Are you distracting away from that fact, or just unaware of it?
Posted by: Dan Staley | Nov 8, 2005 8:43:24 AM
Actually, elemental mercury can be dangerous on its own (to say "it's not a problem" is incorrect; give a kid a jar of elemental mercury to play with, and you'll be taking him to the hospital by the end of the day; it IS toxic, just not as highly toxic as some people seem to thing). You are correct the the organic form of mercury--methylmercury--is more dangerous, because it's more bioavailable (it enters into your system more readily) and thus more toxic. But of course, as the article says, they haven't even done any tests for methylmercury at this site yet! And levels of methylmercury are almost alwyas far lower in water than the levels of inorganic mercury; the only place where the methylmercury will be higher would be in fish tissue. Question is: is anyone even eating fish out of this reservoir? And how much? Fact is, even if the level of mercury in the lake is very high, they will probably still be lower the the levels you would find in a commercial tuna steak.
I am an environmentalist. I believe we need to protect our resources. But when we get hysterical over things that aren't a big deal, we get distracted from real issues, such as urban and suburban water bodies being destroyed in every city in the country because we put down too much impermeable pavement, or people driving their damn cars too much and destroying air quality. These issues are real,and red herrings like this mercury business just distract attention.
Posted by: Marjorie | Nov 8, 2005 12:34:57 PM
Hmmm...I read in your first comment, Marjorie, that Hg toxicity is hysteria, but in your second comment, a kid can go to the hospital if they play with it, but then later on you write it's not a big deal (except, presumably, in commercial tuna).
But you claim to be an environmentalist concerned about water bodies...
If you don't mind, I'll just go with what Clark says on this one, OK?
Best regards,
DS
Posted by: Dan Staley | Nov 8, 2005 2:17:28 PM
Maybe you should read a bit more slowly.
Tiny, tiny, trace, almost unmeasureable amounts of mercury are not anything to get hysterical about. High levels of exposureare. To make it more clear: pounds are different than nanograms. Toxicity is all about the dose. Just because something is dangerous at high levels of exposure doesn't mean you should go into fits when you're exposed to levels that weren't even measureable a few years ago.
Sorry you have such a hard time understanding this. It's not unusual; the concept that toxicology is all about the dose is one than many people don't understand; they think something is poisonous or its not. That's not the case.
Posted by: Marjorie | Nov 10, 2005 6:02:51 AM
Newton had more IQ points to spare than I do and he *still* probably shouldn't have drunk that mercury ("Newton: Mercury Poisoning or Manic Depression?").
Also, once it's out of the rocks, the chances of its bioaccumulating its way to dangerous concentrations is much higher.
Third, we don't actually have a choice merely between destroying a reservoir in a rural area and destroying one in a city; we can protect both. You think we only have a limited amount of attention; I think it's a fair and long-sighted standard that people will get used to.
Posted by: clew | Nov 10, 2005 8:00:13 AM
I've never played with mercury, so I don't know who's right in the above debate. However, four gold mines must generate a lot of revenue and jobs for a town. Is there a way to make these mining operations more environmentally friendly, reducing the mercury pollution? I am for human health, but also I don't think we should be shutting down mines left and right, we should be trying to make them more environmentally friendly. I beleive that its important to drink safe water and breathe good air, and still go out and buy my little sister those 14k gold earings.
Posted by: Gary Durning | Nov 10, 2005 10:57:01 AM
We do have a limited amount of attention. And, more importantly, we have a limited amount of money. There isn't an unending supply of funds to spend towards cleanup and environmental protection. Which is why we have to prioritize. And all of this curernt mercury hysteria is creating a bad priority, since this stuff is at such low doses that it really isn't dangerous.
Besides that, there are other problems created by the current mercury information. Many pregnant women are encouraged to completely swear off fish because of unreasonable fears of mercury contamination; however, the fatty acids in fish are extraordinarily good for brain development, and many studies have foundf that the benefits of eating fish far outweigh any impacts of trace amounts of mercury; and that for poorer people in the places like the Gulf Coast, if people cut out the proteins they are getting from subsistence fishing, they risk causing great harm to their fetus' development.
I won't go on and on. Fact is, disinformation is bad and can cause all sorts of harm. And there's a lot of disinformation about mercury right now.
On a side note; while it's a terrible idea, playing with mercury is LOTS of fun. The stuff is just unbelievable cool. Unfortunately, it's only barely liquid at room temperature and so it's constantly volatilizing; in other words, if you have a bunch of mercury in front of you, you are breathing mercury, because it is turning into gas a you are looking at it. That's why playing with it is so dangerous; you get far more in your system by being in the room with a vial of the stuff than you do by eating a fish that has trace amounts in it's tissues.
Posted by: Marjorie | Nov 11, 2005 6:36:44 AM
Posted by: Dan Staley | Nov 12, 2005 1:02:15 PM
Oops! Forgot this one:
"And, more importantly, we have a limited amount of money. There isn't an unending supply of funds to spend towards cleanup and environmental protection. "
Yes! And folk with Hg contamination have an even more limited amount of money to spend on taxes toward cleanup:
NEW YORK, Feb. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Reductions in IQ due to mercury pollution affect between 300,000 and 600,000 American children each year and will cost the United States an estimated $8.7 billion in lost earnings annually (range: $2.2-$43.8 billion), according to a new study by scientists at the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment in New York, released today in Environmental Health Perspectives, the peer- reviewed journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=43611
Regards.
DS
Posted by: Dan Staley | Nov 12, 2005 1:15:52 PM
Some more gems to sift through, to add to the discussion:
Eric de Place linked to a fascinating website, called "earthworks," in his 11-10-05 posting, "Public lands: Mine, All Mine."
http://www.earthworksaction.org/TRI_issue.cfm
This website documents the disastrous ecological destruction that mining leaves behind. It also provides a hyperlink to another enlightening website, called, "no dirty gold."
http://www.nodirtygold.org/home.cfm
Check it out!
Posted by: Michelle Parker | Nov 12, 2005 5:26:20 PM