Please sign our new petition
Lake Michigan Mercury-Free by
2023
To save our Great Lake Michigan from the scourge of
mercury poisoning we urge the President to declare Lake Michigan a
nationally-protected mercury-free zone and to prohibit any mercury from
entering the Lake by 2023.
Lake Michigan is the water supply for millions of people. When I grew up on its exquisite shores, our family swam and fished freely in
its clear waters. Now mercury poisoning endangers this major fresh water
source.
To All Fellow Supporters for a Mercury-Free Lake Michigan
We are initiating a new
petition calling on the President to declare Lake Michigan a mercury-free zone with
a goal of no mercury discharge into the Lake from any source by 2023. Indiana
has lowered BP’s discharge allowance for its Whiting refinery, but this is far
from a definitive solution to Lake Michigan’s mercury pollution. The bigger goal must be to stop mercury from entering
the Lake from any and all sources.
Mercury comes into the Lake
mainly from industry, power plants, and municipalities - through wastewater, but
also from the air with stack gases and air particulate contamination that
settles into the Lake. Since mercury accumulates and does not decompose, it is hazardous
in any quantity. It poses serious health
threats to all living things both in the water and on the shore.
The Lake is too important to
be left to piecemeal approaches. As concerned citizens we cannot rely on a
system that allows each state to make and enforce its own rules. This common resource must be managed uniformly
with specific goals and timetables.
Please sign our new petition to the President to
save our Great Lake Michigan from the scourge of mercury poisoning. You can find the petition here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/lake-michigan-mercury?source=c.url&r_by=8245180
A short update on delivering our petition "Stop BP Pollution of our Cherished Lake MIchigan" to BP Headquarters in London
Last Thursday, October 3, we personally delivered our petition signed by 713 supporters to BP's London Headquarters. At that time we advised a company official of our goal to establish Lake Michigan as a mercury-free zone and urged BP to take the lead, both in curbing its own mercury discharges into the Lake and in making available to others new technology it may develop for mercury removal. We will advise of any further developments in these regards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24432288
Nations adopt
landmark mercury pollution convention
By Mark Kinver
Environment reporter, BBC News
Nations have begun signing a legally binding treaty designed to
curb mercury pollution and the use of the toxic metal in products around the
globe
Mercury can produce a range of adverse human health effects, including permanent damage to the nervous system. The UN treaty was formally adopted at a high level meeting in Japan. The Minamata Convention was named after the Japanese city that, in the 1950s, saw one of the world's worst cases of mercury poisoning.
In January, four years of negotiations concluded with more than 140 countries agreeing on a set of legally binding measures to curb mercury pollution. UN data showed that mercury emissions were rising in a number of developing nations. The convention regulates a range of areas, including:
• the supply of and trade in mercury;
• the use of mercury in products and industrial processes;
• the measures to be taken to reduce emissions from artisanal and small-scale gold mining;
• the measures to be taken to reduce emissions from power plants and metals production facilities.
Earlier this year, the
UN Environment Programme (Unep) published a report warning that developing nations were facing growing health and environmental risks from increased exposure to mercury. It said a growth in small-scale mining and coal burning were the main reasons for the rise in emissions.
As a result of rapid industrialisation, South-East Asia was the largest regional emitter and accounted for almost half of the element's annual global emissions, it said.
'Highly toxic'Mercury - a heavy, silvery white metal - is a liquid at room temperature and can evaporate easily. Within the environment, it is found in cinnabar deposits. It is also found in natural forms in a range of other rocks, including limestone and coal. Campaigners hope the measures will protect the health of millions of people around the globe
Mercury can be released into the environment through a number of industrial processes including mining, metal and cement production, and the burning of fossil fuels. Once emitted, it persists in the environment for a long time - circulating through air, water, soil and living organisms - and can be dispersed over vast distances.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says: "Mercury is highly toxic to human health, posing a particular threat to the development of the (unborn) child and early in life. "The inhalation of mercury vapour can produce harmful effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, lungs and kidneys, and may be fatal. "The inorganic salts of mercury are corrosive to the skin, eyes and gastrointestinal tract, and may induce kidney toxicity if ingested."
The Unep assessment said the concentration of mercury in the top 100m of the world's oceans had doubled over the past century, and estimated that 260 tonnes of the toxic metal had made their way from soil into rivers and lakes.
Another characteristic, it added, was that mercury became more concentrated as it moved up the food chain, reaching its highest levels in predator fish that could be consumed by humans.Campaigners urged nations to sign the land-mark agreement. "Millions of people around the world are exposed to the toxic effect of mercury," said Juliane Kippenberg, senior children's right researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This treaty will help protect both the environment and people's right to health.”
____________________________________________________________
BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
innovative wildlife science
The Extent And Effects Of Mercury Pollution In The Great Lakes
Region
The
findings from a binational scientific study indicate that efforts to control
mercury pollution in the Great Lakes region have resulted in substantial and
measurable improvements and that additional emissions controls will have
multiple benefits for fish, wildlife, and people who consume fish from the
Great Lakes region. However, mercury pollution remains a major concern in this
region and the scope and intensity of the problem is greater than had been
previously recognized. Biodiversity Research Institute and its collaborating
research partners are actively addressing the need to continue mercury studies
in areas most at risk and to convey this information to policy makers and
regulators who are charged with the stewardship of our natural resources.
Great
Lakes Mercury Connections
distills key results from 35 new peer-reviewed papers accepted in special
issues of two scientific journals:
The
report represents the work of more than 170 scientists, researchers, and
resource managers who used more than 300,000 mercury measurements to document
the impact and trends of mercury pollution on the Great Lakes region.
Great Lakes Mercury Connections is a collaboration of Biodiversity Research Institute, the Great Lakes Commission based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
In 2008, the Great Lakes Commission, funded by the U.S. EPA, sponsored a scientific synthesis of information on mercury in air, water, fish, and wildlife through its Great Lakes Air Deposition (GLAD) program. BRI’s executive director, David C. Evers, Ph.D., was the principal investigator on the project. James G. Wiener, Ph.D. of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Charles T. Driscoll, Ph.D. of Syracuse University was co-principal investigators on this project.
Mercury
pollution is a local, regional, and global environmental problem that adversely
affects human and wildlife health worldwide. As the world’s largest freshwater
system, the Great Lakes are a unique and extraordinary natural resource
providing drinking water, food, recreation, employment, and transportation to
more than 35 million people.
With funding from the U.S. EPA, the
Great Lakes Commission sponsored a binational scientific synthesis effort
through its Great Lakes Air Deposition program. The purpose of the synthesis
project was to foster binational collaboration among mercury researchers and
resource managers from government, academic, and nonprofit institutions to
compile a wide variety of mercury data for the Great Lakes region, and to
address key questions concerning mercury contamination, the bioaccumulation of
methylmercury in food webs, and the resulting exposures and risks.
“Mercury is one of the most persistent and
dangerous pollutants that threatens our health and environment today.”
- U.S. Senator Susan Collins
June
2011 - Senator Collins Introduces
Mercury Monitoring Legislation
Legislation
follows up on studies by
Biodiversity Research Institute.
Read
full press release here.
The
widespread loading of mercury into the Great Lakes environment is responsible
for mercury-related fish consumption advisories in the eight U.S. states and
the province of Ontario that border the lakes. Visit the U.S. EPA website and Ontario province’s Guide for more information.
For
nearly 200 years, mercury has been released into the air and waterways of the
Great Lakes region from human activities such as fossil fuel combustion, waste
incineration, metal smelting, chlorine production, mining, and discharges of
mercury in wastewater.
International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant
(ICMGP)
The ICMGP is considered the
preeminent international forum for discussion of science and policy issues
related to mercury in the environment. The 10th ICMGP, convened in Halifax, Nova Scotia
in July 2011, presented an ideal venue for publicizing results from this
project to a global audience. A special platform session, “Mercury in the
Laurentian Great Lakes Region—a Binational Synthesis” (principal organizer, Dr.
James Wiener), was designed to highlight results of the Great Lakes Mercury
Connections project and to encourage further synthesis of study results. The
Halifax conference provided an excellent array of opportunities for sharing the
results of our work with the global scientific and policy communities involved
with environmental mercury pollution.
As tar sands extraction continues and proposals for expanded pipelines from Canada into the U.S. form a backdrop, the Great Lakes themselves could become the next frontier for moving crude oil to a vast Midwest refinery network.As companies jockey to take advantage of the demand for this unique and significantly cheaper crude, pressures are mounting to find economical ways to move it out — and Great Lakes vessel shipping is emerging as a contender. Already, plans are in the works to dramatically increase the flow of tar sands crude to the Midwest as early as next year; permitting is sought for a $25 million loading dock on Lake Superior to ship the crude in 2015; and a tar sands shipping route has been mapped across the waters of the Great Lakes.
