Dental Offices Adding to Mercury Problem

  • George Washington's dentures. (Photo courtesy of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research)

Dental offices are producing higher levels than
expected of a toxic form of mercury. Rebecca Williams
reports on the findings of a new study:

Transcript

Dental offices are producing higher levels than
expected of a toxic form of mercury. Rebecca Williams
reports on the findings of a new study:

When dentists remove fillings, most of the mercury in the fillings is
trapped in a filter in the spit drains. But some of it does get through.

Mercury in its simplest form is not as toxic as what’s called methyl
mercury. That forms when mercury is exposed to certain bacteria. Methyl
mercury is very toxic even in small amounts.

Researchers at the University of Illinois say they found much higher levels
of methyl mercury in wastewater from dental offices than they expected. In
fact – they say they were the highest levels of methyl mercury ever reported
in an environmental water sample. And that toxic mercury is eventually
released into the environment.

The findings were published online in the journal Environmental Science and
Technology.

To put this all in perspective – the authors say the amount of mercury
coming from dental offices is really, really tiny compared to mercury coming
from coal-fired power plants.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Enviros and Coal-Fired Power

  • City Water Light and Power of Springfield, Illinois compromised with environmentalists to build a cleaner power plant and supplement supplies with wind energy rather than fight through the permitting process. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There are around 100 coal-burning power plants
on the drawing boards. Many of them won’t be built.
In some cases environmental groups will fight to
make sure they don’t get built. But, Lester
Graham reports, one coal-burning power plant is
being built with the blessings of the
environmentalists nearby:

Transcript

There are around 100 coal-burning power plants on the drawing boards. Many of
them won’t be built. In some cases environmental groups will fight to make sure
they don’t get built. But, Lester Graham reports, one coal-burning power plant is
being built with the blessings of the environmentalists nearby:


Usually, when a utility wants to build a new coal-burning power plant, the fight is on. The
utility is challenged by environmental groups every step of the permitting process.
Then, more times than not, the utility and the environmentalists take the fight to the
courts. It means years of delays and millions of dollars of legal bills, but that didn’t
happen here.


Construction workers are erecting the superstructure of a new 500-million dollar
coal-burning power plant. This power plant is scheduled to go online in two years.
When it’s complete, it’ll use the latest technology to reduce the nastiest pollutants
from its smokestack: sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury. And this power
plant is much more efficient.


Jay Bartlett is the chief utilities engineer with City Water Light and Power in
Springfield, Illinois. He says compared to the utility’s older power plants next door,
the new plant will burn about 20% less coal to produce the same amount of
electricity.


“It takes about 1.4 pounds of coal to make a kilowatt of electricity from that plant
over there. This plant will be in the .85 range.”


And that will mean electricity bills for ratepayers won’t have to go up. It also means
the net amount of greenhouse gases is reduced. That makes environmentalists
smile.


And that’s no accident. Jay Bartlett says after being contacted by the local Sierra Club,
the power company and the environmentalists decided to talk:


“It was our goal when we sat down with the Sierra Club, saying, ‘You know we can
fight this out and it will cost both sides lots and lots of money, but will anything good
come out of this in the end?’ And we both decided that something better could come
out of spending those dollars. And what that was investing in wind, investing in
better pollution control, products for this plant to make it as clean as it can possibly be
and move forward. ”


No one really thought this would happen. Not the utility, not the regulators, and not
the environmentalists.


(Sound of coffee shop)


At a downtown coffee shop, Will Reynolds still seems a little surprised. He’s with the
local Sierra Club chapter that worked with Springfield’s City Water Light and Power:


“Yeah, at the start of this I thought there was no chance for any kind of agreement or
compromise. But by the end of it, we had an agreement that reduced the CO2 to
Kyoto Treaty levels, we had a utility that was able to build a power plant to have a
stable, efficient power supply — which was what they were looking for as a small
municipal utility — and in the end, I think it was a win-win for everybody.”


What the two sides agreed to is this: the best off-the-shelf equipment to control
pollution better than the law requires, and to offset the CO2 produced by the plant,
the utility signed an agreement with an Iowa wind-power company to provide part of
Springfield’s electricity:


“Springfield is a small, pretty conservative town that just took a huge step forward
and showed what can be done realistically to reduce our global warming emissions.
And we were able to do it and still provide for our power, still have affordable, reliable
power for the entire city. So, if Springfield can do it, then other cities can do it.”


The state regulating agency, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency,
applauded the efforts. Illinois is a coal-producing state and has been encouraging
power companies to clean up their plants so that coal can still be used without as many
of the pollution worries. IEPA Director Doug Scott says the Springfield utility’s efforts
will be a model for other power companies:


“I mean, all of the things that they did and the things that they worked out with Sierra
Club, the extra reductions that they’re getting over and above what they would have
had to have done in a normal permitting sense. I mean, that they were looking at
trying to be good stewards of the environment as well as being responsive to their
ratepayers as well.”


And Scott says that’s key. Because it’s plentiful and domestic, coal is not going
away. Scott says this can work for not just municipal electric utilities, but private
power companies can keep shareholders happy, keep ratepayers happy and keep
the skies clearer by updating power plants to work more efficiently, seriously reduce
the emissions from coal, and do what they can to offset greenhouse gas emissions
until technology is found that can clean up CO2.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Epa to Regulate Mercury in Steel Industry

  • Cars to be recycled must have any mercury switches removed before they are melted, under new rules. (Photo by paytonc @ Flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a new rule for steel
manufacturers could prevent the release of about five tons of mercury into
the air each year. Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a new rule for steel
manufacturers could prevent the release of about five tons of mercury into
the air each year. Tracy Samilton reports:


Mercury switches are no longer made, but 35 million remain in older vehicles. Rick Otis with the U.S. EPA
says those vehicles will all be crushed and recycled by steel furnaces in about ten years, and that creates a
sense of urgency:


“Otherwise that mercury is going to be disseminated into the environment.”


Steelmakers agreed last year to voluntarily contract only with dismantlers who remove the switches. The
new rule makes it mandatory. But it could be tough to achieve the goal of an 80% recovery rate. Many auto
dismantlers operate on a shoe-string, with little money to train workers to remove the switches. Auto and
steelmakers have kicked in some money to pay dismantlers for each switch recovered. But environmental
groups say it’s not nearly enough.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Your Drugs in Your Water

  • Pharmaceuticals and other toxins have been found in lakes like this one, Lake Champlain. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Less than ten years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey found household drugs and
chemicals in almost every body of water they sampled. Each year since then, at least twenty
studies come out showing these chemicals can affect the hormone systems of wildlife –
and some studies have begun to look at effects on humans. Kinna Ohman reports that,
despite all this, little has been done to address the issue:

Transcript

Less than ten years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey found household drugs and
chemicals in almost every body of water they sampled. Each year since then, at least twenty
studies come out showing these chemicals can affect the hormone systems of wildlife –
and some studies have begun to look at effects on humans. Kinna Ohman reports that,
despite all this, little has been done to address the issue:



Every major water body in the United States, whether it’s a river, lake, or wetland,
probably has at least one scientist keeping an eye on it. Lake Champlain is no exception.
This large lake, forming much of the border between Vermont and northern New York,
has its share of scientists… and Mary Watzin is one of them.


Watzin’s the director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory in Burlington,
Vermont. She’s been studying how human pollution and activities impact the lake’s fish,
birds, and other water wildlife.


Watzin’s been around long enough to see quite a few of the big pollution problems resolved,
but you can’t help noticing some frustration when she talks about the latest issue:


“We’re cleaning up our act, at least with PCBs – we’re working on mercury – and
then there’s all this new generation stuff coming along.”


This new generation of pollutants includes the active parts of household chemicals and
drugs which have the potential to impact the hormone systems in wildlife. They’re in
detergents, cleaning products, and many types of drugs such as antidepressants, steroids,
and even birth control pills. Chris Hornback is with the National Association of Clean
Water Agencies:


“They’re coming from consumer products. In the case of pharmaceuticals, they’re
coming from drugs that our bodies aren’t completely metabolizing. Or, in some
cases, from unused pharmaceuticals that are being flushed down the toilet.”


And the problem is, once these drugs and chemicals leave our house, many of them aren’t
filtered out at wastewater treatment plants. Treatment plants were not designed to handle
these types of pollutants. So any lake or river which receives treated wastewater can also
receive a daily dose of these active chemicals.


Because these pollutants can number in the hundreds, just how to study them is under
debate. Mary Watzin says the old way just doesn’t work anymore:


“The classic way to examine one of these compounds is just to test it by itself. But
the fish aren’t exposed to these things by themselves, because they swim around in
the general milieu of everything that gets dumped out.”


But looking at how mixtures of household chemicals and drugs affect fish and other
wildlife can bring up more questions than answers. Because of this, Pat Phillips, a
hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says we might want to concentrate on just
keeping these pollutants out of the environment:


“One of the things we see is that we see mixtures of many different compounds
coming into the wastewater treatment plants and coming into the environment.
And its very difficult to figure out what effect these mixtures have. But if we can
remove some of them, that makes a lot of sense.”


In the past, when the issue was industrial toxins, the solution was to control these toxins
at their source. This is because wastewater treatment plants weren’t made to deal with
industrial toxins in the same way they’re not made to deal with household drugs and
chemicals. But now, Chris Hornback says controlling this new generation of pollutants at
their source just isn’t practical:


“A lot of the substances that we’re talking about now including pharmaceuticals
and other emerging contaminants are coming from the households. So, those
sources are much harder to control. You can’t permit a household. A wastewater
treatment plant can’t control what a household discharges so that’s where public
outreach, and education, and pollution prevention efforts come into play.”


These efforts are really only starting. Some states have begun pharmaceutical take-back
programs to keep people from flushing unused medicines down the drain, but
participation is voluntary.


Everyone involved agrees that in order to solve this problem, it’s going to take people
thinking about what they’re sending down their drains. But just how to broach this
somewhat private topic is yet another question.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Pushing Chemical Plants to Cut Mercury

Environmental groups say it would make financial sense for chemical
plants that emit a lot of mercury pollution to go mercury-free. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups say it would make financial sense for chemical
plants that emit a lot of mercury pollution to go mercury-free. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:


Environmentalists have been zeroing in on businesses that use mercury to make
chlorine for industrial processes. In many cases, the mercury escapes into the
atmosphere and eventually gets into the food chain. Some chlorine producers
have switched to mercury-free technology, but a report by the group Oceana
zeroes in on five US plants that haven’t made the change.


Oceana spokesperson Eric Uram admits going mercury-free can cost tens of
millions of dollars. But he says the firms can often save money on energy:


“Which they can either pass on to their shareholders or they can increase their
profitability.”


But the manager of one chlorine plant says the amount of money needed to
make the change has her corporate headquarters proceeding cautiously.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

E-Waste Polluting Overseas

  • Exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead and mercury, workers stay at the scrap yards for the $130-a-month pay. (photo by Ted Land)

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste, or e-waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:

Transcript

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste , or e-
waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:


The city of Taizhou is in eastern China. It’s an industrial port city. A lot of the people
who travel here are here on business. Ships loaded with new products are often headed
for the United States. But it’s not just what leaves this city that makes business boom…
it’s also what’s coming in:


“I know it’s polluted here but it’s not a big deal. The most important thing is my
children, that’s the reason why I found work here.”


Liu Qinzhen works at this Taizhou scrap plant. It’s the final stop for some of the nearly
4,000 tons of scrap and e-waste that enters the port each day. Liu is one of hundreds of
workers who squat under an outdoor pavilion picking apart old circuit boards and wires.
She works 9 hours a day, 7 days a week, earning about 130 dollars a month.


The work is dangerous. She and the other workers are exposed to harmful chemicals
from e-waste such as lead and mercury. The 23-year-old moved here for this job because
she needed to support her two kids:


“I used to work in a shoe factory but then I had a baby and it’s not convenient to have a
baby there so I moved here even though the pay is the same. I come from the countryside.
You can’t earn money on a farm.”


The plant where she works is considered safer than scrapping these materials in the
countryside where families work in their front yards and in their homes. They melt
circuit boards and burn wires to extract bits of valuable copper and gold.


Environmental organizations have documented evidence that what’s left over after the
valuable metals are retrieved is dumped into local rivers and streams:


(Land:) “I noticed when we arrived they shut down the other door of that other shop?


“They are doing the same kind of e-waste, but they are afraid of being discovered by
others.”


Afraid, says Taizhou resident Chen Yijun because what they’re doing is illegal. Chinese
law forbids the import of e-waste, yet piles of foreign electronics litter the countryside
and pour into scrap plants daily.


Yijun is a teacher at Taizhou #1 High School, where students are concerned about what
the e-waste industry is doing to their environment. They’ve been testing the water in
local streams, looking for signs of harmful chemicals:


On this day they draw several gallons from a stream. The banks are littered with piles of
electrical cable. Chen Zhengyan has been working on the project for years:


“The frogs here are different from frogs in other places because sometimes they have
extra limbs. We are sure the pollution is from e-waste because in this area there is no
other industry.”


Chen and her colleagues say this pollution is harmful to people, too. They tell local
government officials such as Liang Xiaoyong that something has to be done to improve
the situation. But, Liang says there’s only so much the government can do to combat an
illegal industry that so many residents make their living off of. He says cutting off the
imports is difficult because sometimes e-waste is hidden in with other scrap. He doesn’t
deny the waste industry is a big business here:


This industry generates a lot of tax money for us in the form of tariffs. So, if this industry
doesn’t exist, the Taizhou harbor won’t survive.


Jim Puckett is coordinator of the Basel Action Network, a Seattle based group that
confronts toxic trade issues around the world. He says it’s not that the Chinese
government is unwilling to stop imports, it’s simply unable to stop them.


“They’ve banned the import, the problem is they can’t control that flow, it’s just coming at
them container load after container load through various ports and they can’t possibly check every
single one.”


American waste is literally fueling the fires burning electronics that dot the countryside in
China. And many of the original owners of this gear had taken it to be recycled, and
thought they’d done the right thing. But, often it ends up on a ship, headed for scrap
yards overseas.


About seven thousand miles away from Taizhou, practically the other side of the globe,
there’s a warehouse in Springfield, Illinois stacked with old electronic gear.


The Illinois State Department of Central Management Services, or CMS, disposes of old
state property, including old copy machines, computers, and monitors. In 2005, CMS
was contacted by the Basel Action Network with some disturbing information. The
group was finding State of Illinois computers dumped in developing countries around the
world. Curtis Howard is manager of CMS state and federal surplus property:


“It hit me pretty hard, the fact that, not realizing, you know I always look at it, these guys
were here, they come in, they bid on our property, you know I’m maximizing the return on
the state’s investment, I’m doing a good job, I never really thought about the tail end of
the dragon.”


Basel Action Network coordinator Jim Puckett says if the Chinese are unable to stop the
imports, then it’s up to the United States to control what they export:


Other countries have laws forbidding it, laws controlling it, but in the United States, we
don’t even have a law to control this export.


The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that have not signed and ratified the Basel
Convention, an international treaty that bans hazardous waste exports. That means if
anything is going to be done to stop electronic waste from polluting countries overseas,
it’s going to be up to the States to take action.


It starts with buying electronics from companies that make products that are more easily
recycled, and ends with making sure old electronic gear is getting into the hands of
responsible recyclers who don’t simply ship the e-waste to scrap yards overseas.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ted Land.

Related Links

Good Fish, Bad Fish

  • Some grocery stores are training their staff on the benefits and risks of eating some kinds of fish. Nels Carson (pictured) answers customers' concerns about fish contamination. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:

Transcript

Fish advisories are confusing. Their guidelines change depending on your gender and age,
and on the type of fish you’re eating. Reporter Kyle Norris boils down
some of the information in advisories and comes up with a few things to think about
when you eat fish:


So I did a little informal survey the other day where I asked my friends what they knew about
eating fish. Some of my friends said, “Hey, isn’t eating fish good for you?” Well, turns out they’re right. Fish are
great sources of protein. They’re low in “bad” fats and high in “good” fats, or omega-3
fatty acids, which help your heart stay healthy.


And some of my other friends knew that fish were bad for you. Turns out they’re also right. Fish
take in pollutants through their food and water. Toxins such as mercury, PCBs, and
dioxins. If humans eat enough contaminated fish, those contaminants can build up in our
bodies and cause serious health problems. Contaminants are especially threatening for
small children and women of childbearing age because they can affect children’s
developing nervous systems.


Governments put out advisories so we know which fish are safe to eat. But advisories aren’t
the easiest thing to understand. And anyway, what do you do if you’re in a restaurant, or
cruising through the grocery store and you just want some fish?


“Uh we’re standing in front of the seafood counter at Whole Foods and we’re looking at
our fresh case…”


That’s Nels Carlson. He heads up the seafood department at my local Whole Foods
Market. He says people ask him about fish safety everyday:


“It can be kind of a daunting topic, I think, because there is such a variety. It’s not just a
gross generalization. So it really, it takes a lot of dialogue between customers and team
members and having a very knowledgeable team member base here really helps that.”


They’ll ask him about mercury in the fish, a highly toxic metal that occurs naturally but is a lot more prevalent
mostly because of coal burning power plants. Mercury shows up in higher concentrations
in certain kinds of fish. It’s nice to have a knowledgeable guy like Nels to talk with. Good fish vendors, such as
Whole Foods, go through special training on fish safety. But what if there’s no seafood
expert hanging out next to the fish sticks in the freezer section, if you know what I mean?


Anita Sandretto teaches in the Environmental Health Sciences department at the
University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, and she said that my friends are right.
Okay, well, she didn’t really say that, but she said there are good things about fish and there are bad things about fish:


“If you want to have the benefit of the fat and the omega-3 fatty acids, eat fish with more
fat, but the fat will also be where you will see the contaminants such as PCBs, dioxin.
The flesh will also be where you might have the mercury contamination.”


See, that’s the thing about eating fish: it gets complicated and there are no hard and fast
rules. Sandretto says eating fish is all about treading a line between the advantages and
the risks. So, if there is a risk, you want to reduce it as much as possible:


“…Because if you have any risk in a particular type of food, if you only consume once in
while, you have a less risk of anything bad happening.”


So think in terms of moderation and variety. Sandretto says it’s cool if you want to eat fish once or
twice a week, and to try and vary the kinds of fish that you eat. She says moderation and
variety are actually great rules of thumb to apply to your entire diet. So you could eat a
turkey sandwich on white one day, tuna on whole wheat the next, and a veggie burger the day
after that.


If you eat fish caught from local waters, check with your regional or state health
departments for their fish advisories. Just because a waterway looks clean or is in a
picturesque setting does not mean that its fish are harmless. Contaminants enter the
water in all kinds of ways.


One last thought: imagine a little fish with a little bit of contamination in its body.
Now imagine a medium-sized fish, who swims along and eats that fish and 99 of its closest small
fish friends. That medium guy now has 100 times more contamination than the small fish.
And now let’s say a big fish swims up and gulps down ten medium fish. That big fish has a
concentration that’s 1000 times higher than what that origianal small fish had.


So the moral of that story is, eat smaller fish when possible, also called pan fish. And
at the end of the day, keep in mind that the majority of research, including a recent study
from Harvard’s School of Public Health, say that the benefits of eating fish in moderation
outweigh the risks.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Hair Tests Find State Reps Are Contaminated

An environmental group wants to convince lawmakers that tougher mercury rules are needed. They tested legislators for mercury contamination. Amanda Vinicky reports:

Transcript

An environmental group wants to convince lawmakers that tougher mercury rules are needed. They tested legislators for mercury contamination. Amanda Vinicky reports:


Usually the main area under the Illinois State House dome is filled with lobbyists and lawmakers. But earlier this year a haircutter set up shop to take hair samples from several willing legislators.


Their hair was tested for mercury. Turns out, 9 out of 28 have more mercury in their systems than the federal government considers safe.


Jean Flemma is with the Mercury Free Illinois coalition. She explains why they tested politicians:


“We thought it would be an interesting representation of the public as a whole, because our representatives represent us.”


Another reason is because of their control over environmental policy. Flemma says once lawmakers see they can be affected, they’ll want to act to reduce mercury emissions from coal burning power plants and other sources.


For the Environment Report, I’m Amanda Vinicky.

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New Mercury Regs Ignore Older Cement Makers

Critics say the US Environmental Protection Agency caved in to pressure from the White House and the cement industry in formulating a new mercury emissions rule. Tracy Samilton reports the rule will let old plants pollute as much as ever:

Transcript

Critics say the US Environmental Protection Agency caved in to pressure from the White House and the cement industry in formulating a new mercury emissions rule. Tracy Samilton reports the rule will let old plants pollute as much as ever:


Mercury is a deadly toxin that can cause birth defects and other health hazards. The new rule restricts mercury emissions on new or updated cement plants. But old plants don’t have to clean up their mercury emissions.


Bill Freese lives near an older cement plant that has been emitting ten times more mercury than it was disclosing to regulators. Freese says he’s disgusted by the EPA’s decision. He’s also none too happy that the plant, which advertises its friendliness to the environment, hasn’t voluntarily reduced the emissions.


“They just refuse to do it because they’d rather not spend the money. As long as they can continue doing what they’re doing, why spend money to clean things up? And they call themselves stewards of our environment.”


Cement industry officials say mercury scrubbing technologies would cost too much, but promise voluntary reforms of some kind in the future.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Cutting Mercury Emissions at Cement Plants

The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

The US EPA is reconsidering a decision to let cement plants off the hook when it comes to mercury emissions. Tests at several cement plants showed they were emitting up to ten times the mercury being disclosed. Tracy Samilton reports:


Cement plants emit mercury from both the coal they burn and from processing limestone, an ingredient of cement. But the EPA has never regulated the mercury emissions. The agency said it would be too costly for the industry. Cement manufacturers say they plan to voluntarily reduce mercury emissions over time.


But Michael Wall of the Natural Resources Defense Council says the EPA needs to exert control over the plants now.


“It would be as if we took a segment of the coal-fired power plant industry and just said ’emit mercury freely, we’re not going to do anything about it.’ That makes really bad policy and it’s really bad for our public health.”


An EPA spokesman says the agency is taking a second look at the issue, in light of stack tests showing some plants may have been grossly underestimating their mercury emissions.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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