To save pennies on food and fuel, we let industries poison our children:
In 2005, researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York released their finding that mercury air pollution was costing the U.S. economy $8.7 billion a year in lost earnings due to diminished IQs of children exposed to mercury in the womb.
Mercury is well known and well understood as poison -- to both children and adults -- but it also is a developmental toxin. It affects developing fetuses and children in a way that it doesn't affect adults, and its effects are permanent and irreversible.
Lowered IQ. Lessened ability to learn. Reduced capacity for life. Why?
Because we like cheap electricity, and in today's market coal-fired electricity is the cheapest. When coal is burned, mercury is released into the air. Then it makes its way into the nostrils, lungs and brains of our children.
The solution is simple: Require all coal-fired power plants to install equipment that captures mercury before it escapes into the air.
Try that idea out on the power and coal companies. You won't have long to wait for the denials, evasions, knee-jerk rejections of data, lobbying and the charming PR that is churned out by the industry resistance machine.
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