Clean Air, Healthy Families
New EPA clean air standards will cut mercury pollution by 90% and save 46,000 lives each year. The coal industry and their friends in Congress are trying to roll back these standards, but we’re urging Congress to let the EPA do its job and move forward with its commonsense plan to protect public health.
Toxic air pollution threatens our health
More than half of all Americans live in places with unsafe levels of air pollution, which causes heart attacks, asthma attacks, emergency room visits, hospital admissions and even deaths year.
Studies show that one in ten women of childbearing age has enough mercury in her bloodstream to put her child at risk of health effects should she become pregnant. This means that more than 689,000 out of the 4.1 million babies born every year could be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury.
The consequences are serious: Children who are exposed to low levels of mercury in the womb can have impaired brain functions, including verbal, attention, motor control and language deficits, and lower IQs. When these children are monitored at ages 7 and 14, these impairments still exist — suggesting that the damage caused by mercury may be irreversible.
Nearly 4,000 bodies of water contaminated nationwide
Coal-fired power plants spew hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic mercury into our air every year, which falls in the form of rain and contaminates rivers, lakes and streams.
And it doesn’t take much mercury to have a big impact on our health. Scientists found that a single gram of mercury can contaminate an entire 20-acre lake.
According to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, “Mercury levels in Maine fish, loons, and eagles are among the highest in North America.”
Pregnant women are advised not to eat any freshwater fish caught in Maine due to the risk of mercury. The threat of mercury contamination also led the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to recommend against eating fish caught from the Kennebec, Androscoggin and Penobscot rivers, among others.
With your help, we can save 46,000 lives
Recently, the EPA moved ahead with efforts to significantly reduce mercury, soot and smog pollution, announcing historic new emissions standards that combined could save 46,000 lives a year. Unfortunately, polluters and their allies in Congress launched a coordinated attack to block these critical safeguards.
We’re working closely with our allies in the public health community, lobbying Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and rallying thousands of activists stand up for public health.
It won’t be easy, but if enough of us speak out, we can drown out the coal industry lobbyists and make sure that the EPA is allowed to do its job and protect public health.
Thank President Obama for setting a strong standard to reduce mercury pollution.
Key Facts
- New air pollution standards will save 46,000 lives.
- Right now, mercury pollution puts 1 in 10 women of childbearing age at risk.
- Together with our allies, we’ve delivered more than 800,000 comments to the EPA in support of a strong mercury standard. The EPA received 907,000 comments on the standard—more than any other EPA standard in history—and the vast majority were in support of a strong standard.
- In December 2011, the Obama administration responded to this show of support by announcing the first-ever nationwide standards for mercury pollution from power plants. This followed the July 2011 announcement of new standards for smog and soot pollution for power plants in the central and eastern United States.