EPA Takes Key Step to Address Mercury, Cancer-Causing Toxics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Dr. Elena Craft,Toxicologist, 512-691-3452, [email protected]
Sharyn Stein, Media Director, 202-572-3396, [email protected]

 

(Washington, DC – April 30, 2010) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed nationwide clean air standards to address a range of hazardous air pollutants discharged from industrial, commercial and institutional boilers, process heaters, and solid waste incinerators.

EPA estimates the standards would prevent between 2,000 and 5,000 premature deaths and about 36,000 asthma attacks each year.

“EPA’s proposal is a critical step toward addressing toxic air pollutants released in neighborhoods and communities across the nation, which will help save lives and prevent disease,” said Environmental Defense Fund toxicologist Dr. Elena Craft. “Deploying available clean air solutions to reduce the most toxic air pollution means healthier children and healthier communities.”

The standards would address mercury and other toxics from over 13,000 large industrial boilers at utilities and petroleum, chemical, paper and plastics industrial facilities nationwide. EPA is also proposing mercury emission standards for numerous additional stationary sources. These boilers burn a variety of fuels, including coal, oil, gas and biomass.

EPA is proposing a variety of limitations on these harmful emissions and, for some sources, EPA is proposing a work practice standard that would secure human health protections through facility-based energy audits that reduce a range of harmful air pollutants.

Mercury is a neurotoxin associated with impaired brain development in children, among other harmful health effects. Some of the other contaminants addressed by the standards are known or suspected to cause cancer.

EPA is proposing to reduce mercury by 75 percent at the nation’s largest industrial boilers and by more than 50 percent at numerous other boilers across the nation. Industrial boilers emit about 16,000 pounds of mercury annually; they are the second largest source of manmade mercury air emissions.

Mercury can transform into methylmercury in bodies of water. Methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin that bioaccumulates through the food chain; humans can be exposed to it through fish consumption.

An EPA report from November, 2009 found concentrations of toxic chemicals in fish tissue from lakes and reservoirs in nearly all 50 U.S. states. And, as reported in the 2008 Biennial National Listing of Fish Advisories, the presence of these toxic compounds in fish tissue have led to fish consumption advisories in 43% of our nation’s lakes, meaning that pregnant women and other sensitive populations should be especially careful to limit their intake of certain fish species.

EPA’s actions today will help address the serious human health and environmental impacts from mercury in fish.

Under the Bush Administration, EPA’s 2004 rules for these pollution sources were determined to be contrary to law and the rules were vacated in 2007 by the federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C.

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