Why is coal our number one source of electrical power?
The U.S. Geological Service has released results of a seven-year study showing that mercury was found in every single fish tested in nearly 300 of the nation’s streams. Mercury levels in nearly a quarter of the samples were found to excede what the government considers safe for consumption.
The biggest source of mercury in the environment is the exhaust from coal-fired power plants, the single largest producer of electricity in this country. Waterways with the highest levels of mercury pollution were found to be along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana, where surrounding forests and wetlands help convert the fallout from power plant smokestacks into methylmercury.
Remind me again why we are so enamored of coal as a power source.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
Because it’s CHEAP, and plentiful here.
I stopped eating fish in May. Thanks for the reminder why.
JBL, ah, yes. So many of the things we thought were cheap actually turn out to be very expensive. In this case, coal is at the top of the list of fossil fuels that are killing the planet. Their relative abundance only insures that they will be killing the planet faster and for a long time–or maybe not so long.
What’s the feasible alternative at this point? So much of the energy policy debate is all or nothing, on each side – the “drill baby drill” camp on the right, the all renewable camp on the left. Neither side seems willing to recognize the need to phase out our current dirty sources over what really has to be a number of decades to achieve 1) energy self-sufficiency and 2) sound environmental stewardship.
And coal’s abundance need not kill the planet – coal gasification and emissions sequestration are technologies that are in reach, if we have the will to put the research time, effort, and money into making them feasible and viable.
rw, dream on. We’re probably already cooked. A far more feasible alternative is nuclear. Watch Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, third largest U.S. power producer, on the subject. Even he acknowledges that carbon sequenstration “isn’t commercial” and doesn’t have a chance of becoming so for at least 10 or 15 years. With 7 billion people on the planet and more coal plants coming on line every day, we can’t wait that long. As Colbert says to Rogers in this clip, the alternative is “the Rapture…See you on the other side.”
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/230610/june-16-2009/jim-rogers
Well if we’re all “cooked” who cares about some mercury in our fish.
RW, truly that is a question worthy of Camus
Ah well NOBODY talks about reducing energy consumption (any consumption) because that is just plain un-American. Nope, only expensive, not-terribly-efficient “alternatives.” We haven’t been able to eat fish out of Lake Michigan since the late 1970s unfortunately. Or well we COULD except we’d only be able to eat one fish per year. My daughter will have to wait until 2025 to eat her first yellow perch. It is a bit of a shame, and shame on us.
El, unfortunately Seafood Watch doesn’t address mercury in Lake Michigan fish in any sort of fashion. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that all fish it has tested from the lake and tributaries show some mercury contamination, but below action levels–safe to eat on an occasional basis.
Here’s text from a 2004 EPA report:
Mercury concentrations in fish averaged 139 ng/g in lake trout and 69.0 ng/g in adult coho salmon. These average values are approximately 10 times below the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) action level of 1000 ng/g (1 ppm) for fish tissue mercury content. Even the maximum mercury concentration measured in the LMMB Study (396 ng/g) was well below the FDA action level. However, EPA guidance for fish advisories is based on the methylmercury content of fish, and methylmercury was not measured in fish in the LMMB Study. Therefore, the data from this study are not readily comparable to the EPA guidance. However, based on the conservative assumption that 100% of total mercury was in the form of methylmercury, 3% and 9% of lake trout and coho salmon, respectively, fell into the unrestricted consumption category established in the EPA guidance for methylmercury. The most contaminated coho salmon and lake trout specimens collected in the LMMB Study fell into the 4 meals/month and 2 meals/month restriction categories, respectively. For the average coho salmon sample, EPA guidance would recommend restricting consumption to 12 meals per month; and for the average lake trout sample, EPA guidance would recommend restricting consumption to 4 meals per month. This recommendation is consistent with state-wide advisories for mercury that have been issued by several states. While Lake Michigan fish mercury concentrations warrant some level of fish advisory, few fish advisories in Lake Michigan have been based solely on mercury contamination, because Lake Michigan waters are generally under more stringent fish advisories based on PCB contamination.
Seafood Watch lists two Great Lakes fish as a “best choice,” those being trap-net whitefish from lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan. (Set gillnet whitefish is listed as “good alternative.”), and yellow perch from Lake Erie. It lists as “good alternative” the following: Lake Superior herring, Lake Superior trout, Lake Erie walleye and rainbow smelt. It says “avoid” lake trout from Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Here’s the listing information from Chicago’s Shedd Aquariuam: http://www.sheddaquarium.org/right_bite_in_the_great_lakes.html
And here’s the 230-page report (pdf) that Seafood Watch issued on Great Lakes fish: http://www.sheddaquarium.org/pdf/MBA_SFWReport_Great_Lakes_FinalDraft_1_31_08.pdf
Thanks for that, Ed. It’s the PCBs and dioxin that are really kind of scary; Michigan has a watch list and advisory for each and every lake and river, telling you how many fish you can eat and end up with what’s advisable or not. (here’s the link, sorry I don’t know html code) http://www.michigan.gov/documents/FishAdvisory03_67354_7.pdf
In the end, it’s probably okay for me to whip out the smelt gillnet and go to town at the beach but that’s about it. Still kind of sad; I grew up eating out of the lake. We’re really mucked things up pretty well is all I am saying…
El, that’s incredible. I don’t know whether to be completely blown away by the meticulous effort undertaken by the state of Michigan to compile this document, or utterly depressed by the littany of pollution in every single body of water. Your right, we have mucked things up beyond anyone’s imagining. It’s a tragedy. It would be so easy for Seafood Watch to link to this document. I wonder why they don’t. Does every state publish something like this?
I have no idea if every state does; Michigan relies fairly heavily on tourism as an industry and fishing and hunting are big draws. It would figure, right? The state touches 4 of 5 Great Lakes, and has the biggest coastline of any state excepting the dealbreaking Alaska. So it behooves the consumers to know what they’re getting into, and, I guess, for the state to cover its ass. But what’s really wild? The state updates this document EVERY YEAR. Yep, and it’s a poor state, too. Like I said in my one and only post on this issue, http://fastgrowtheweeds.com/2008/03/19/on-fish-and-fishing/
it’s a crying shame: I could barely see the bottom of the lake when we fished it, and now it’s immaculately clear, just a tad heavy on the heavy metals, dioxin, PCBs and now weedkiller. SIGH.
Still amazing. My first real experience fishing, besides trying to catch sunfish out of the creek in the forest preserve, was casting a faux-frog into a pond at Blaney Park on Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. My dad helped me cast. Then some kind of whopper fish took the lure…then spit it out. I still wonder what that fish would have looked like if we had landed it. I suppose it would have been edible, but maybe not so much today. That trip I also got my first taste of blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup, and we took the Toonerville Trolley to Tahquamenon falls. Great memories. Michigan is a great state.