Summer fun is underway in Wisconsin. As the outdoor recreation season heats up, the state is fresh off a record-breaking $23.7 billion tourism season in 2022.
That means hundreds of thousands of visitors every year are breathing our air, drinking our water, and eating our abundant fish. It’s not all fun and games, of course. There’s the mosquito bites and sunburns, and an occasional tick or ornery spider. All risks we understand and take in stride.
But what about cancer? Or damage to your eyes, skin, and breathing passages? How about harm to your kidneys, lungs, and nervous system, cardiovascular disease and even worse?
Not the most effective tourism messages. Unfortunately, that’s what mercury pollution brings into our beautiful outdoors here in Wisconsin and across the country. That pollution is in Wisconsin’s soil, water, and air thanks in part to toxic fossil fuel power plants.
Wisconsin still has six coal-burning power plants and 20 gas-burning plants. The pollution from those plants doesn’t stay where it’s created, but settles miles away. Where I live in Green Bay, it’s feasible we are getting mercury pollution from power plants as far away as Sheboygan.
Power plant pollution is hurting our health and devastating our climate. Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that poses significant harm to all people in the U.S., particularly children and vulnerable populations. Power plants also release other toxic air pollutants like arsenic, mercury, and other heavy metals that cause disease and premature death.
Mercury from coal-fired power plants is released into the air, falls into waterways and accumulates in fish that visiting anglers and local families alike eat. This potent neurotoxin causes permanent damage to the brains of babies and fetuses, leading to developmental delays, learning disabilities and birth defects. It also hurts other wildlife. Mercury builds up in apex predators, such as raptors, that feed on species already filled with too much mercury.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent proposal to strengthen the lifesaving Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is the right step forward to cut mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal plants. These are commonsense standards that will have profound positive effects here in Wisconsin and across the U.S.
These safeguards have been supported by health and medical organizations, the environmental and faith communities, outdoors organizations, and clean energy companies. All people, including pregnant people, babies and those who live closest to toxic power plants, are depending on the Biden Administration to set the strongest possible protections.
Historically, clean air standards have cut a significant amount of this pollution. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a success story. The standards have achieved a 90% reduction in mercury pollution from power plants and cleaned up dangerous particle pollution at the same time.
We know clean air standards work.
Now, though, we need the Biden Administration to do more to adequately protect us. In order to keep his promises to protect public health and the environment, President Biden and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan must finalize the strongest possible protections from mercury and other toxic air pollution.
Our health, our children’s health, our communities and the state’s economic health can not wait.
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originally published at https%3A%2F%2Fwisconsinexaminer.com%2F2023%2F06%2F23%2Ftoxic-mercury-is-a-real-summer-fun-buzzkill%2F by Seth Hoffmeister
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