WP: Excess Mercury Levels Increasing (affect 1/5 childbearing-age women)

[DeepModem Mom]

Excess Mercury Levels Increasing
Survey Shows Fifth of Women of Childbearing Age Are Affected

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A02


One-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their hair that exceed federal health standards, according to interim results of a nationwide survey being conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

The study, which was commissioned by the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, offers the latest evidence of how much mercury Americans are absorbing by eating fish. Coal-fired power plants and other sources release mercury into the air, which ends up in water and is absorbed by fish. The pollutant, which is a neurotoxin that can cause developmental problems in fetuses and young children, makes its way into the bloodstream when people eat contaminated fish.

Researchers at UNC's Environmental Quality Institute based their findings on hair samples from nearly 1,500 people, many of whom learned of the study through the Internet. Participants either paid $25 to submit hair samples with a home testing kit or got free tests at 27 hair salons across the country sponsored by Greenpeace, Aveda salons and state and local environmental groups....

***

The last major national study of Americans' mercury exposure, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999 and 2000, concluded that about 12 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury levels that exceeded EPA's safety standard.

The new study found excess mercury levels in 21 percent of the 597 women of childbearing age who were tested....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49896-2004Oct20.html

[havocmom]

1. 12% in 1999 & 2000, 21 percent this year?!? So the rate almost doubled

in 4-5 years? Jeeze, we are on the road to extinction and we are clipping right along that highway.

People, mercury does not do good things for our children. It isn't just TV and questionable policies in school districts dumbing us down.

[DBoon]

3. Like the way lead was blamed for the decline of Rome

Ancient Rome loved lead - even used lead containers to store wine. Historians speculate that endemic lead poisoning among Roman ruling classes lead to the decline of the Roman Empire.


http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.htm

Quoting:

The first century A.D. was a time of unbridled gluttony and drunkenness among the ruling oligarchs of Rome. The lead concealed in the food and wine they devoured undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the outbreak of unprecedented epidemics of saturnine gout and sterility among aristocratic males and the alarming rate of infertility and stillbirths among aristocratic women.

Still more alarming was the conspicuous pattern of mental incompetence that came to be synonymous with the Roman elite. This creeping cretinism manifested itself most frighteningly in such clearly degenerate emperors as Caligula, Nero, and Commodus. It is said that Nero wore a breastplate of lead, ostensibly to strengthen his voice, as he fiddled and sang while Rome burned. Domitian, the last of the Flavian emperors, actually had a fountain installed in his palace from which he could drink a never-ending stream of leaded wine.

We wouldn't be the first civilization to poison ourselves into oblivion

[havocmom]

4. Just what I was thinking. For a species with such great potential, we

seem to be slow learners.

[hatrack]

5. Nature does not generally reward wilfully stupid behavior

Sadly, this is a point we seem to miss again and again and again.

[hatrack]

2. Yes, but Clean Coal Technology will allow us to . . . uh . . . something .

Oh yeah, it'll allow us to shovel billions in tax subsidies to companies operating coal-fired power plants for washing the coal before they burn it, yeah, that's it.

I wonder if this topic ever comes up on the Nashville Network's fishing programs.