NAS Backs EPA Mercury Toxicity Findings

N E W   Y O R K, July 11 -- Methyl-mercury exposure is a “widespread and persistent problem in the environment” and may cause neurological problems in 60,000 children born in the U.S. each year, according to a report released today by a panel of National Academy of Sciences experts.

The report confirms Environmental Protection Agency studies regarding the mercury’s toxicity, and says that the Agency is justified in calling for strict regulations of mercury emissions.

“The NAS study will reinforce and underscore the science that we use to make those [regulation] decisions,” EPA spokesman Dave Cohen said, adding that the agency was very pleased with the NAS results.

Regulation Plans Stalled

The NAS report, which concludes an 18-month review of the science used by the EPA in establishing newguidelines for protecting the public from mercury contamination, eliminates a key obstacle to EPA plans to regulate mercury from power plants.

Regulation plans were stalled for nearly two years after Congress, citing “gaps in the scientific data” used by the EPA in determining mercury’s toxicity, banned the agency from further developing mercury regulations in 1998.

Noting that the EPA relied upon conflicting studies — one on the health impact of low-level mercury exposure to children in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, and the other in the Faroe Islands off Scotland — Congress ordered the NAS to review the agency’s methods and conclusions.

The Faroe study found adverse developmental effects among children whose mothers, while pregnant, were exposed to relatively low levels of mercury in fish. But the Seychelles study found no discernible link.

“The NAS looked at key studies and concluded they were all good, but not all of them were appropriate for a recommendation. The report concluded that the Seychelles study should not be used [to determine the health effects of mercury emissions] because it was the only one that did not show effects,” explains Felice Stadler, Policy Director of the Clean Air Network in Washington, D.C.