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 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 thousands of heart attacks, asthma attacks, emergency room visits, hospital admissions and even deaths each year.
Studies show that one in 10 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 even low-dosage 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.
More than 30 rivers, lakes, and streams in Missouri contaminated by toxic air pollution
Coal-fired power plants spew hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic mercury into our air every year, which falls to earth 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 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, mercury impairs 3,781 bodies of water across the country. More than 6 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds in the United States are contaminated by mercury pollution.
And more than 30 water bodies in Missouri — from the Current and Meramec Rivers to Lake Saint Louis — are impaired by mercury pollution in fish tissue.
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 key senators, 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 the EPA for reducing toxic mercury emissions.
Key Facts
- New air pollution standards, once implemented, could save 46,000 lives every year.
- 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 strong clean air standards — no other single EPA rule has ever received so much support.
- On December 21st, 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 regions of the U.S.