Heavy metal harm: the fight against highly toxic mercury in the environment has just begun

E: The Environmental Magazine, May-June, 2002 by Jim Motavalli

The late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro loved to eat tuna fish. An avid environmentalist, she was shocked to hear that her favorite food was contaminated with the toxic heavy metal mercury, and she expressed her anger in a song. "I'm young enough, I'm old enough in the city machine/Where industries fill the fish full of mercury (it's tax free)."

Nyro was right to worry about eating fish, and right about industrial mercury use. Forty states have issued advisories about eating fish that may have high levels of mercury in their tissues. As recently as last July, Massachusetts public health officials warned young women and children under 12 to stop eating "most" fish caught in state rivers and lakes, and to avoid certain seafood. Tuna was on the list, as was swordfish.

Mercury is a persistent heavy metal, processed into a liquid from mined cinnabar, that accumulates in water and in the tissues of humans, fish and animals. It was declared a hazardous air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1971. According to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, long-term human exposure to mercury in either organic or inorganic form "can permanently damage the brain, kidneys, and developing fetuses." A potent neurotoxin, mercury is slowly being phased out of many commercial uses, including consumer thermometers, but it is still used in many industrial processes and is in such products as fluorescent lights, home and appliance thermostats, and even toys.

Ask most people about mercury in the environment and they're apt to think of broken thermometers. But the truth is that industry, in the form of coal-fired power plants, electric arc furnaces (which melt and recycle the steel from old cars) and municipal waste incinerators are the major sources. In landfills and in water, bacterial contamination turns mercury into its most toxic form, methyl mercury. Mercury also gets into the environment in pharmaceutical products, and through ritual religious uses, especially in Latin American Santeria (see sidebar). Mercury sells for less than $2 a pound on the wholesale market, and even when it is "recycled," it may still end up in the environment.

Progress is being made to end some ot mercury's more visible uses, but the campaign is far from over. Five states have laws that either put some restrictions on mercury use, sale of disposal or require labeling of products containing it. Similar bills are pending in 15 state legislatures. "Despite state and local bans, thousands of retailers still sell mercury thermometers to consumers who aren't aware of the risks," says Felice Stadler, policy coordinator of the National Wildlife Federation's Clean the Rain campaign.

"Just one seventieth of a teaspoon of atmospheric mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake for a year," says Michael Bender, executive director of the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project. "We have to take mercury per anently out of commerce. It s not that difficult to containerize it and store it indefinitely. An ideal solution would be the kind of `producer responsibility' laws they have in Europe, which make companies responsible for their waste."

U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has proposed legislation that would create a task force to address the mercury problem on a national scale. Under her bill, the Mercury Reduction and Disposal Act, S.351, the sale of thermometers containing the metal would be banned nationally, and the mercury inside them would be stockpiled and treated similarly to nuclear waste. Stadler says, "Enacting a nationwide ban on sales is essential."

In response to a campaign led by Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), five drugstore chains, including CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Eckerd, have agreed to stop selling mercury thermometers. These companies represent 71 percent of chain pharmacies, but mercury thermometers are still on sale at Kroger, Medicine Shoppe, Publix and Fred's stores. "It's appalling that there are retailers that continue to sell potentially dangerous mercury devices to their customers, especially when safe alternatives exist in the marketplace," says Jamie Harvie, mercury coordinator of HCWH. Eight states and a number of cities o have banned or restricted the sale of mercury thermometers, and 600 hospitals and clinics have agreed to get mercury out of their waste streams.

But mercury thermometers are only one, very visible part of the problem. Because mercury has many uses and applications, the movement to get it out of the atmosphere must take a multi-pronged approach. Some of the campaigns have made more headway than others, but all have acquired a new urgency as the dangers of mercury become better known.

Fish Filled With Mercury

According to a 2001 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, one of 10 American women of childbearing age is at risk for having a baby born with neurological problems due to in utero mercury exposure. Statistically, that means 375,000 babies are at risk every year. Nearly six million women who might be considering having a child already have mercury levels above EPA safety guidelines.