Mercury
Emission From China Exceed USA
By J. Winston Porter
(As published in The Virginian-Pilot, 8/10/98)
Who
is the chief culprit responsible for the elevated levels of mercury found
in freshwater fish? Environmentalist dogma notwithstanding, it is China that
loads the atmosphere with the largest share of the airborne mercury that is
transported and deposited around the world; the United States is just a tiny
player in the global pool.
Because of the low priority it places on pollution control in burning coal, China alone accounts for about 1,000 tons of the toxic metal emitted annually. By contrast, U.S. mercury emissions are no more than 160 tons per year, and dropping. That China industrializes by dirtying its own air and fouling its own water is perhaps its right. But matters get more complicated when China's economic growth produces mercury that contaminates fish in U.S. waters and loads the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide that destroys Siberian forests or when it contributes to greenhouse-gas emissions that might lead to global climate change.
All
of this is discouraging for other countries, for while the West is making
efforts to curb emissions, China is blithely going ahead as it always has.
Chinese officials make it clear that they will not sacrifice economic growth
for the sake of the environment.
Perhaps the biggest concern, at least for the United States, is evidence that atmospheric mercury can remain airborne for a year or more. These atmospheric emissions are transported for thousands of miles and account for as much as a third of the mercury that winds up in the United States.
Mercury contamination is extremely hazardous. The human body has no use for the toxic metal, which attacks the central nervous system and, in high doses, can cause insanity or even death. Mercury also harms fish-eating wildlife, many of which have elevated mercury levels in their blood.
The
discharge of mercury into waterways was outlawed more than 20 years ago, and
the use of methyl mercury in fungicides was stopped, but mercury pollution
continues to be a problem. High concentrations of mercury have been found
in fish taken from rivers and lakes in remote places where there are no coal-fired
power plants or incinerators. New studies implicate atmospheric mercury as
the source of the contamination.
The assumption is that targeting U.S. facilities represents the most practical way to reduce mercury pollution. In reality, a punitive crackdown on coal-fired power plants that generate more than half of the nation's electricity, if implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency, will impose huge costs on consumers, without really controlling the problem. There is no point in committing the nation to a new regimen of costly restrictions - not when a multitude of emission sources in China and other countries escape scrutiny largely for political reasons.
The controversy over mercury pollution is only a symptom of a more fundamental conflict in hazardous waste cleanup. The central idea behind EPA's regulation of toxic emissions is to put the spotlight on companies by requiring them to file annual reports on all chemical discharges. That is the purpose of the Toxics Release Inventory, which was established more than a decade ago and now incorporates data from 37,000 industrial facilities.
Missing from the TRI is data on airborne emissions transported thousands of miles from other continents. Yet to be incorporated in the inventory is accurate information on chemicals that other countries emit. We should not assume that industrial facilities in the U.S. are the only sources that deserve attention. The Environmental Protection Agency should consider including in the inventory data on major emissions from foreign countries. The information is increasingly important in determining U.S. strategy on air pollution.
©J. Winston Porter 2001