Mercury Rising

No, this isn't a movie review. It is a horror story however. Pennsylvania is second in the nation (to that environmental wreckage known as Texas) in mercury pollution. Mercury is a by product of coal burning power plants. Pennsylvania, of course, is coal country. One of my grandfathers was a coal miner in Wilkes-Barre and died from black lung disease. There's no such thing as "clean coal" folks. That's all industry propaganda. Mercury escapes into air from these plants and pollutes our waterways and ground. It's a very dangerous heavy metal.

How bad is mercury? Go here and read what the Centers for Disease Control says. One of the problems with mercury is its absorption by fish. Eating fish contaminated by mercury transfers that poison to the person.

An effort by industry to derail recent legislation in Harrsisburg to toughen the state's controls was recently successful. The pro-pollution lobbyists were victorious and Pennsylvania will continue to be the second worst state in the nation for mercury pollution. The real horror of this are these: many Democrats voted to allow this pollution and because we have no lobbying disclosure laws we'll never know how they were persuaded by the energy and coal industries. One thing is for sure though; I bet none of those voting for coal had autistic children.

One more point to make here. There is technology available to "scrub" coal so most of the mercury is removed before it is burned. Isn't the common sense approach to be mandating this instead? This is a classic "pay me now or pay me later" issue. The costs of removing the mercury are far less to our society than dealing with the aftereffects of the pollution.

I regret to say my own state Senator was on the wrong side of this vote. Shame.