There’s a big lie making the rounds that EPA’s ultra-expensive new mercury regulation is worth the cost ($10 billion annually) because it will protect fetuses from developmental disorders.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is the most prominent perpetrator of the mercury lie. Recently, she gave a pep talk to a group of collegian environmental activists trying to shut down campus coal fired power plants, during which she said:

“It’s so important that your voices be heard, that campuses that are supposed to be teaching people aren’t meanwhile polluting the surrounding community with mercury and costing the children a few IQ points because of the need to generate power.  It’s simply not fair.”

Over at Think Progress Green, Brad Johnson does his part to spread mercury disinformation, by pooh-poohing Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) for having claimed (correctly) that the mercury rule won’t have any benefit for babies and pregnant women. According to Johnson,

“The glimmer of fact in Whitfield’s claims is that the health costs of mercury poisoning of our nation’s children over decades of unlimited coal pollution are difficult to quantify. Mercury poisoning is rarely fatal and hard to detect, but causes undeniable, insidious developmental harm to fetuses and babies.”

Naturally, environmentalist special interests are the worst propagators of this mercury mendacity. The day that EPA Administrator announced the final mercury rule, Sierra Club launched a television advertisement depicting a little girl learning to ride a bike, while a voiceover states:

“When this little girl grows up her world will have significantly less mercury pollution because President Obama and the EPA stood up against polluters and established the first-ever clean air standards. This action means that our air, water, and food will be safer from mercury pollution and heavy metals generated by coal-fired power plants. Like you, President Obama understands that reducing toxic mercury pollution increases the possibilities to dream big.”

Global atmospheric mercury might or might not be a problem—I don’t know. But I do know that mercury emissions from U.S. coal fired plants pose a negligible danger to fetuses. And I know this because EPA told me so.

Mercury emissions aren’t a direct threat to humans; rather, they settle onto bodies of water, and then make their way up the aquatic food chain. Because mercury is a neurotoxin, the fear is that pregnant women can engender development disorders in their fetuses by eating fish that have bio-accumulated mercury. Accordingly, EPA identifies pregnant women as the population at highest risk from U.S. power plant mercury emissions.

The graph below is taken from page 51 of EPA’s Technical Support Document: National-Scale Mercury Risk Assessment Supporting the Appropriate and Necessary Finding for Coal and Oil-Fired Electric Generating Units, which is essentially EPA’s justification for regulating mercury. I’ve crudely photo-shopped the graph to highlight the supposed threat posed by U.S. coal fired power plants to pregnant women.

Three notes: (1) In the proposed rule, EPA stated that 2016 projections for mercury emissions (29 tons) reflect current emissions, so this graph (the “2016 scenario”) represents the current mercury threat; (2) EPA “interpreted IQ loss estimates of 1-2 points as being clearly of public health significance” (p. 17 of the Technical Support Document); and (3), the columns of the graph, “Watershed percentiles,” refer to freshwater, inland bodies of water, and the degree to which they have been polluted by mercury (i.e., the 99^th watershed percentile refers to the top one-percent mercury-polluted freshwater, inland body of water).

According to EPA’s own analysis, the new mercury regulation serves to protect America’s population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen, who eat 300 pounds of self-caught fish reeled in exclusively from the most polluted bodies of water.  Notably, EPA failed to identify a single member of this supposed population. Instead, these people are assumed to exist. Is that a plausible assumption?

Even if there are one or two pregnant super-anglers with voracious appetites for self-caught fish from the most polluted lakes and rivers, a 1.1 improvement in IQ is such a slight benefit that it could not possibly be disassociated from statistical noise. EPA’s mercury regulation, therefore, is a double whammy of nonsense. It would benefit an apparitional population with a statistically invisible improvement, all for only $10 billion a year. What a deal!

Mercury is making the rounds in the news, with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, a Lisa Jackson appearance on The Daily Show (and part two), and a bunch of angry blogs. From the angry blogger:

Famed science deniers Willie Soon and Paul Driessen, both of whom have worked for groups that accept cash from Exxon Mobil to pretend global warming isn’t happening, have a new crusade: Mercury denial!

That’s right: They have an op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal claiming that breathing toxic mercury isn’t bad for you.

Willie Soon, astronomer. And Paul Driessen, lobbyist with a degree in geology. Expertise in public health? Limited. Willingness to take cash from the coal polluters that pump tons of mercury into our air every year? Extensive.

What’s that? You want to know what actual medical researchers have to say about the subject? Fine, have it your way:

Note that the post begins with a personal attacks on the individuals (as well as their funding), and ignores the number of valid arguments brought up in the piece. It also ignores the similarly esteemed medical researchers have noted that the U.S. accounts for less than 1% of global mercury emissions, so eliminating our mercury emissions (which comes at a cost, despite Lisa Jackson’s assertion that it will create jobs for those who install mercury scrubbers) won’t have a significant effect on atmospheric mercury content, and thus the alleged negative health effects. This paper estimates that man-made mercury emissions account for approximately 30% of total annual emissions, with 70% coming from natural sources. As the WSJ piece notes, this helps to put the ‘coal plants are killing your babies’ into perspective:

How do America’s coal-burning power plants fit into the picture? They emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. But U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.

All these emissions enter the global atmospheric system and become part of the U.S. air mass. Since our power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% in our atmosphere.

In the face of these minuscule risks, the EPA nevertheless demands that utility companies spend billions every year retrofitting coal-fired power plants that produce half of all U.S. electricity.

Furthermore, its the dose that makes the poison. Almost all of us have some traces of mercury in our blood (remember, 70% of this is exposure is from natural sources humans have no control over):

According to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which actively monitors mercury exposure, blood mercury counts for U.S. women and children decreased steadily from 1999-2008, placing today’s counts well below the already excessively safe level established by the EPA. A 17-year evaluation of mercury risk to babies and children by the Seychelles Children Development Study found “no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects” in children who eat several servings of ocean fish every week, much more than most Americans do.

The World Health Organization and U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry assessed these findings in setting mercury-risk standards that are two to three times less restrictive than the EPA’s.

It’s simply mind boggling that someone is willing to accuse another of dishonesty while creating so much of it on his own. Here is a longer post criticizing Lisa Jackson’s statements on The Daily Show. Here is a 2008 CEI study on mercury pollution and human exposure.

The 2012 presidential election is starting to bend some of the Obama Administration’s environmental and energy policies.  I have noted previously that the White House realizes that gas prices are a huge threat to President Barack Obama’s re-election.  Consequently, the President is trying to shift the blame to oil companies and speculators while at the same time talking up what his Administration is doing to increase domestic oil production.  The reality, of course, is that the Obama Administration has moved across the board to decrease oil production in federal lands and offshore areas.

Another sign of the Administration’s focus on the President’s re-election is that the Environmental Protection Agency has suddenly started paying attention to the concerns of industry.  The timetables for new regulations of coal ash disposal and of surface coal mining in Appalachia have been extended.  EPA announced last week that it was reconsidering, but not delaying, some parts of its new Clean Air Act rule for cement plants.  This week EPA suspended indefinitely a similar rule for industrial boilers that it had promulgated in February.  EPA said that it will conduct more analyses and re-open the public comment period for the boiler rule.

EPA is also considering acceding to requests from Congress and electric utilities to extend the public comment period for its proposed Clean Air Act rule for coal-fired power plants. A good excuse for extending the comment period is that a simple mathematical error in EPA’s calculations has been pointed out by the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a utility industry coalition.

The boiler MACT (which stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology), cement MACT, and utility MACT rules would limit air emissions of mercury and approximately 70 other metals and other substances.  The delays in finalizing and implementing these three rules may postpone the considerable economic damage that each of them will do until after the election.  Environmental pressure groups are naturally not happy with anything that delays shutting down the U. S. economy, but there are rumors that they have been told by the White House to shut up until after the election.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a major rule to regulate power plants under the Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.

This post is a primer on this consequential and controversial decision.

Section 112 of the Clean Air Act

• In 1970, the Congress added Section 112 to the Clean Air Act, requiring that the EPA list and regulate Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that could “cause, or contribute to, an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illness.” The Congress ordered the EPA to establish standards for HAPs that provided “an ample margin of safety to protect public health.”
• Due to difficulties interpreting what should constitute “an ample margin of safety,” the EPA largely ignored Section 112 for two decades.
• In 1990, the Congress, frustrated with the slow pace of HAP regulation, amended the Clean Air Act to remove much of EPA’s discretion over the implementation of Section 112. Lawmakers listed 189 pollutants for regulation. They also legislated HAP pollution controls, known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. The Clean Air Act amendments set a “MACT floor” (i.e., a minimum HAP pollution control) at “the average emission limitation achieved by the best performing 12 percent of the existing sources.”
• Section 112 MACT standards apply to both new and existing stationary sources.
• Notably, the Congress required the EPA to proceed with caution before it regulated Electricity Generating Units (“EGUs,” or power plants). The 1990 Clean Air Amendments mandated a study on the public health threats posed by EGU HAP emissions, and the EPA Administrator was authorized to proceed with the regulation of HAPs from EGUs only after evaluating the results of this study, and concluding that “such regulation is appropriate and necessary.”

Clinton’s Lame Duck Machinations

• In 1998, the EPA completed the study on the public health threats posed by EGU HAP emissions. It found a “plausible link” between EGU mercury emissions and harm to public health.
• On this evidence, the Clinton Administration EPA found it was “appropriate and necessary” to regulate HAPs from EGUs under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. This decision was made during the ex-President’s lame-duck session.

Courts Kill Bush Administration’s Proposed Regulation

• As I explain above, the Congress narrowly defined MACT pollution controls in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, so the EPA had little discretion in creating a regulatory regime for HAP emissions from EGUs.
• In an effort to impart more flexibility, and thereby reduce costs, the Bush Administration EPA in 2004 proposed to delist EGUs from Section 112, and instead regulate HAPs from power plants under Section 111, the New Source Performance Standards. In particular, the EPA proposed regulation of HAPs from EGUs under Section 111(d), which (possibly) authorizes a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for existing sources.
• In February 2008, a federal appeals court struck down the Bush Administration’s proposed cap-and-trade for HAPs. The Court found that the EPA had failed to take a number of procedural steps before it tried to “de-list” EGUs from regulation under Section 112.

HAP Regulations Comport Well with Obama’s War on Coal

• In the wake of the federal appeals court’s decision to strike down President Bush’s proposed HAP regulation, environmentalist special interests sued the EPA to force it to promulgate a new regulation. In April 2010, a federal court approved a settlement between environmentalist litigants and the EPA, which set a March 16 2011 deadline for the proposal of HAP regulations for EGUs. Today is that deadline.
• Of course, environmentalists didn’t have to twist the President’s arm. Then-Senator Barack Obama campaigned for the White House on a promise to “bankrupt” the coal industry. The EPA’s proposed HAP regulation for EGUs is particularly onerous on fossil fuel generation, so it comports well with the President’s war on coal.
• The EPA concedes that the regulation would cost $10 billion a year by 2015. This is likely a low ball. According to the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, the price tag is as much as $100 billion a year. There are also reliability concerns. In 2010, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation performed an analysis showing that the proposed HAP rule could lead to the retirement of up to 15 gigawatts of electricity generation.

What’s Next?

• Litigation. The aforementioned 1998 study on the public health effect of HAPs emitted by EGUs addressed only the effects of mercury. Today’s rule, however, covers mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases, despite the fact that EPA has yet to demonstrate an incremental health benefit caused by reductions in non-mercury HAPs from EGUs. It is likely that industry will challenge today’s proposed rule for including these non-mercury HAPs from EGUs without also providing evidence that their regulation would improve public health.