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Know Where It's Coming From
Each year power plants and other sources create tons of mercury pollution, which makes its way into our homes and bodies in fish.Some of the sources of mercury pollution include metal smelting, chlorine chemical plants, cement plants, and coal-fired power plants. Power plants are the largest source, emitting around 50 tons of mercury pollution annually. Cement plants are the fourth largest emitter of airborne mercury in the United States, and facilities that recycle auto scrap are another big source of mercury pollution, historically pouring 10 to 12 tons of mercury into the air every year. Chlorine plants, which use massive quantities of mercury to extract chlorine from salt, "lose" mercury when mercury volatilizes during maintenance and other operational activities. The most common way Americans are exposed to mercury is through tuna fish.
NRDC: Mercury Contamination in Fish - Know Where It's Coming From
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- Public Discussion (16)
Power Plants
Coal is naturally contaminated with mercury, and when it is burned to generate electricity, mercury is released into the air through the smokestacks. The bulk of this mercury pollution could be eliminated with the installation of pollution-control devices. Similar devices have proved very successful on municipal incinerators, which were once a significant source of mercury pollution.
In 2009, NRDC and several environmental allies achieved an enormous victory when the EPA settled a lawsuit to finalize a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standard by November 2011, reducing all hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, from the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants. The revised standards will facilitate long-delayed efforts to clean up mercury emissions from roughly 1,100 coal-fired boilers at more than 460 electric power plants.
- 1 vote
#1 - Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:24 PM ESTGood!
I do feel rather silly saying that when I used to play with mercury as a girl...
- 1 vote
#2 - Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:41 PM ESTI still do. ;-) My fillings are still good after more than 40 years, and NO by golly, I'm not messing with them.
- 1 vote
All of my teeth that had mercury had been replaced with other elements over the years..
IF we think back at all the stuff that was not good for us.. like asbestos, lead, and mercury.. I have interacted with all of it.. including as a child we use to play 'soldier' in a field a block and half from my house that later they found buried 55 gallon drums of chemicals.. I am surprised I do not have more problems physically than I do mentally.. lol
- 2 votes
Of course our science and technologies were not where they are today.. ever advancing to help us try to be safe.. like mercury in the fish.. at one point I thought it might be a way for someone to make more money out of the price of fish.. I may just cut fish out completely..
- 2 votes
No, in many ways, they're worse. So many things are made of petroleum by-products, and there is virtually no natural fiber products around any more.
Like thread in the store. It is all polyester, not a blend, just pure polyester. That's a petroleum by-product. Plastic bottles, plastic toys, no telling what is in our TVs, cars, stereos, phones, etc. Sometimes, I do wonder where we would be without plastic, but feel like we need to be going to more 'natural' products. Glass bottles, and recycle them. Wooden parts to toys, not plastic.
Part of our dependency on oil is more than just gas for the car! :-)
- 1 vote
Part of our dependency on oil is more than just gas for the car! :-)
Everything we can think of has some link to oil.. either for lubricating the machinery to make it or in the final product..
- 2 votes
Yep. And the more I look around, the more I see petroleum based products. I miss glass coke bottles, though. :-)
- 1 vote
Glass is so much easier to make .. all the ingredients are natural.. and can be recycled..
- 1 vote
And basically completely benign, inert, etc. We need to start up that coke bottle deposit thing again. :-)
And brown paper wrappers, instead of plastic.
- 1 vote
Yeah.. let's write Coke and Pepsi.. and tell them we want bottles instead of plastic..
- 2 votes
Let's! :-)
Maybe we could start an Internet request... :-)
- 1 vote
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