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Mercury in Fish: Cause for Concern?
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html Mercury Is Everywhere Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. The Hawke |
Have you been living in a cave? You just discovered this? Bush has been
performing sexual (and legal/financial) favors for his chums in the utility industry. He's given them a free pass to do absolutely nothing about coal-burning power plants. As you said, some mercury releases occur naturally, but some don't. Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". "Bill" wrote in message news:ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53... http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html Mercury Is Everywhere Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. The Hawke |
In article ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53, wrote:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html Mercury Is Everywhere Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. The Hawke The website you point to asks if mercury in fish is cause for concern. The answer is a resounding yes. Besides the warnings on the page you cite, against eating more than 12 ounces of fish per week, here's another FDA-generated warning: http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/admehg.html Title: "An important message for pregnant women and women of childbearing age who may become pregant, about the risks of mercury in fish." Recommendation: "long-lived, larger fish that feed on other fish accumulate the highest levels of methylmercury and pose the greatest risk to people who eat them regularly. You can protect your unborn child by not eating these large fish...Shark, Swordfish, King macerel, Tilefish." The article notes also that FRESHwater fish are more dangerously contaminated. Yet another joint FDA & EPA warning is a little more strident: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fishadvice/advice.html It says plainly not to eat more than 12 ounces of fish a week if you want to remain in the safe zone. The greatest dangers to exposures to the least amounts of mercury are prenatal. At present typical mercury levels are not thought to be a significant health hazard to adults. But the really dangerous levels of both mercery & dioxin are in farm-raised fish rather than wild-caught, though dioxin is a growing problem with wild-caught as well, from pesticides that wash into bodies of water, & from waste management programs that generate dioxins as a byproduct pumped directly in the oceans. Commercial fishing enterprises and especially fish farming umbrella organizations are busily generating "mercury is safe" literature & "FDA uses junk science" disinformation in order to drum up public support to reverse FDA and EPA protections against mercury poisoning. Dickhead Cheney would like nothing better than reverse all consumer protection legislations of any kind but most especially those like the Mercury act promoted primarily by Cheney's archenemy Patrick Leahy. Republicans are even now attempting to reverse Senator Leahy's mercury contamination bill, & have already pressured EPA into maintaining a level of acceptable exposure about one-fifth that of the FDA recommendations. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
Doug Kanter wrote:
Have you been livingplentyave? You just discovered this? Bush has been performing sexual (and legal/financial) favors for his chums in the utility industry. He's given them a free pass to do absolutely nothing about coal-burning power plants. As you said, some mercury releases occur naturally, but some don't. Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". Where do you assholes come from, you must crawl out from under a rock whenever you see a post in which you can diss Bush. I could care less about you or Bush or your crusade against him. I would suggest that a moron like you should eat a lot of mercury laden fish! LOL The Hawke |
In article bR93d.68804$MQ5.37181@attbi_s52, wrote:
I posted the reference and part of the article for information only! You and idiot Doug, seem to think that you can make up people's mind for them. The Hawke Idiot schmidiot. I in no way suggested otherwise with my post, but only elaborated the points you quoted & provided further citations for the stiff FDA warnings. So you're just an oversensitive splash of old man sputum. your pal, paggers paghat wrote: In article ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53, wrote: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html Mercury Is Everywhere Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. The Hawke The website you point to asks if mercury in fish is cause for concern. The answer is a resounding yes. Besides the warnings on the page you cite, against eating more than 12 ounces of fish per week, here's another FDA-generated warning: -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
My grandfather was a gold miner.
"Back in the day" before anyone knew any better, he used quicksilver to separate the gold out from the quartz. In his later years, he went crazy. I think it was due to Mercury Poisoning. I don't even think that they put mercury in thermometers anymore do they? Kate "paghat" wrote in message ... | In article ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53, wrote: | | http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html | | Mercury Is Everywhere | | | Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist | Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are | released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the | Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually | into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household | and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. | | The Hawke | | The website you point to asks if mercury in fish is cause for concern. The | answer is a resounding yes. | | Besides the warnings on the page you cite, against eating more than 12 | ounces of fish per week, here's another FDA-generated warning: | http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/admehg.html | Title: "An important message for pregnant women and women of childbearing | age who may become pregant, about the risks of mercury in fish." | Recommendation: "long-lived, larger fish that feed on other fish | accumulate the highest levels of methylmercury and pose the greatest risk | to people who eat them regularly. You can protect your unborn child by | not eating these large fish...Shark, Swordfish, King macerel, Tilefish." | The article notes also that FRESHwater fish are more dangerously | contaminated. | | Yet another joint FDA & EPA warning is a little more strident: | http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fishadvice/advice.html | It says plainly not to eat more than 12 ounces of fish a week if you want | to remain in the safe zone. | | The greatest dangers to exposures to the least amounts of mercury are | prenatal. At present typical mercury levels are not thought to be a | significant health hazard to adults. But the really dangerous levels of | both mercery & dioxin are in farm-raised fish rather than wild-caught, | though dioxin is a growing problem with wild-caught as well, from | pesticides that wash into bodies of water, & from waste management | programs that generate dioxins as a byproduct pumped directly in the | oceans. | | Commercial fishing enterprises and especially fish farming umbrella | organizations are busily generating "mercury is safe" literature & "FDA | uses junk science" disinformation in order to drum up public support to | reverse FDA and EPA protections against mercury poisoning. Dickhead Cheney | would like nothing better than reverse all consumer protection | legislations of any kind but most especially those like the Mercury act | promoted primarily by Cheney's archenemy Patrick Leahy. Republicans are | even now attempting to reverse Senator Leahy's mercury contamination bill, | & have already pressured EPA into maintaining a level of acceptable | exposure about one-fifth that of the FDA recommendations. | | -paghat the ratgirl | | -- | "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. | "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. | -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" | Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
don't feed it, Paggers.
maddie -- Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." Chief Seattle "paghat" wrote in message ... In article bR93d.68804$MQ5.37181@attbi_s52, wrote: I posted the reference and part of the article for information only! You and idiot Doug, seem to think that you can make up people's mind for them. The Hawke Idiot schmidiot. I in no way suggested otherwise with my post, but only elaborated the points you quoted & provided further citations for the stiff FDA warnings. So you're just an oversensitive splash of old man sputum. your pal, paggers paghat wrote: In article ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53, wrote: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html Mercury Is Everywhere Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released annually into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning household and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal. The Hawke The website you point to asks if mercury in fish is cause for concern. The answer is a resounding yes. Besides the warnings on the page you cite, against eating more than 12 ounces of fish per week, here's another FDA-generated warning: -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
"Bill" wrote in message
news:bR93d.68804$MQ5.37181@attbi_s52... I posted the reference and part of the article for information only! You and idiot Doug, seem to think that you can make up people's mind for them. The Hawke Holy smokes. Are you a dumb phuque, or WHAT? Ever heard of the Minimata disaster, 50 years ago in Japan? A real mercury picnic. The first link is probbly the goodest 4 u kuz it has a pikture first, showing wut merkry kin do to a kid. http://www.ecosuperior.com/pages/minimata.htm http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/M...ry-Victims.htm http://www.tekran.com/phpcode/Mina_main.php http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/1.../feature2.html |
I tuned in to the radio on Thursday and heard a guy with a raspy voice being
interviewed. No, it wasn't PBS, my normal station, but that TV station that rebroadcasts on the radio (I never can remember its call letters!), and they allow all types on the air. Anyway, it was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I didn't know that, at first, and listened very critically. I am definitely very "green" but I am also very wary and never ever accept anything on first hearing. I had heard about the mercury problem in Japan many years ago. I thought, erroneously, that this was being handled carefully for the protection of the American public, and would have been warned these last 30 years if we were in danger. Now I realize my VERY serious error in this. Kennedy has written a book in which he talks about the environmental impact of the Bush administration, which got a lot of press at first, but then 9/11 came along and everyone forgot the foolhardy things Bush was doing because they felt guilty and felt they needed to be "patriotic". Foolishly, I thought maybe some of the problems were solved! Not at all. Look what Bush did in his first months of office: "The Clinton administration was prosecuting 51 power plants on their violations of the Clean Air Act. But the coal industry and the coal-burning utilities gave $4.8 million to President Bush during the 2000 election. When Bush came in, he repaid the favor by ordering the Justice Department and the EPA to drop all those lawsuits. We've never seen anything like that in American history before -- where a president comes in having accepted political contributions from criminals and then orders the prosecutions dropped against them." The name of the book is "Crimes Against Natu How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy". I urge everyone who is of like mind, and anybody on the fence, to get it and read it and VOTE THE JERK OUT OF OFFICE! Anybody would be better. Even Kerry :) "Doug Kanter" wrote in message ... "Bill" wrote in message news:bR93d.68804$MQ5.37181@attbi_s52... I posted the reference and part of the article for information only! You and idiot Doug, seem to think that you can make up people's mind for them. The Hawke Holy smokes. Are you a dumb phuque, or WHAT? Ever heard of the Minimata disaster, 50 years ago in Japan? A real mercury picnic. The first link is probbly the goodest 4 u kuz it has a pikture first, showing wut merkry kin do to a kid. http://www.ecosuperior.com/pages/minimata.htm http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/M...ry-Victims.htm http://www.tekran.com/phpcode/Mina_main.php http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/1.../feature2.html |
P.S. Here is a link to an interview if you'd like to follow up on this
issue: http://www.perc.org/publications/articles/rfk.php |
Doug Kanter wrote: Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". Give it up, Kanater. The election is over, you guys didn't even have a candidate this year. |
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:40:08 GMT, Bill wrote:
You and idiot Doug, seem to think that you can make up people's mind for them. Poor Hawke another victim of a rectal cranial inversion! You obviously can't read.... Ya gotta HAVE a mind to make up! |
"Norman Bates" wrote in message ... Doug Kanter wrote: Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". Give it up, Kanater. The election is over, you guys didn't even have a candidate this year. The binary thinking alarm just went off. I'm not enthused with Kerry, but that is in NO way related to the reality of what Bush has done to please his puppeteers in the utility industry. You know that. |
In article et,
"SVTKate" wrote: My grandfather was a gold miner. "Back in the day" before anyone knew any better, he used quicksilver to separate the gold out from the quartz. In his later years, he went crazy. I think it was due to Mercury Poisoning. I don't even think that they put mercury in thermometers anymore do they? Kate Right, it's not in thermometers anymore. But I can remember breaking a thermometer as a kid, rollikng the mercury around in the palm of my hand, & putting it in a small pill bottle to keep in a little rock collection -- then being sad that it evaporated. Its dangers were not unknown yet at the time every household had several easily broken glass thermometers laying about, for checking fevers or weather thermometers. That's a danger now of the past. It was once widely used as a medicine for treatment of minor & severe illnesses from acne to syphyllus. Its side-effects included kidney failure, dissolving the spine & other bone loss, gum loss, tooth loss, nail discoloration, hair loss, Crohn's disease & other severe gastrointestinal illness, cardiovascular disease, severe fatigue, mental deterioration, memory loss, moodiness, & madness, palsy, seizure disorders, blindness, deafness, damage to central nervous system, neurological disorders, language difficulty, diminished motor skills, Cushing's syndrome, endocrine disturbances. When a large toxic exposure occurs the health issues that result are severe & unmistakable. At lower but persistent exposures, mercury may pass undetected as the cause of Guillian-Barre syndrome, long-term memory loss, dementia, & senility, colitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, & many other problems for which a causal link to mercury is difficult to prove but which many researchers suspect. Dental amalgam, normal amounts of mercury in even wild-caught fish, & evaporative levels accumulating in basements, may well be contributing factors. "Causal link" is the key word here. Many health problems have been shown beyond any statistical dought to have an increased incidence in people with mercury in their teeth. They study that started the debat was a 1993 compilation of 1,569 patients from four countries with an array of minor symptoms potentially associated with mercury poisoning, chiefly memory difficulties & chronic fatigue (another area difficult to quantify beyond each patient's own subjectivity). All 1,569 patients had their dental amalgams removed, with an 80% recovery rate for the sufferers. This is a highly indicative study, but it analyzed existing case studies that were not set up to prove any causal link. But a second study of 2,000 additional cases undertaken in Germany had the same high rates of recovery after removal of mercury amalgams. The American Dental Association has remained stubborn about acting on such findings on the basis of there being no "causal link" firmly established. And by now they don't dare take a belated stand or dentists will risk being sued out of existance by everyone with so much as a headache or recurring fatigue because all mercury fillings done since the early 1990s can certainly be regarded as legally & medically a known risk that dentists consciously decided to ignore. Such lawsuits are already being brought, which puts the ADA in the sorry position of having to support growing numbers of dentists who've done the wrong thing, & their best method of support right now is to deny it is the wrong thing to do. The ADA actively threatens anti-amalgam dentists who speak openly about the current science, because the ADA rightly believes such concerned dentists who refuse to stick to the party line are a threat to dentists collectively. And dentists have left the ADA in droves over this issue; half of all dentists under the age of thirty-five with more modern awareness of their trade never join the ADA at all. Yet the studies keep coming. A University of Kentucky study established conclusively that people who die of Alzheimer syndrome have twice as much mercury in their systems as is normal. Low-level but ongoing exposure from such sources as fillings have been implicated "a possible factor" in multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, & Parkinson's disease. The near impossibility of turning statistical likelihood into definitive causal link is what made it possible for the tobacco industry to pretend for decades that cigarettes were harmless, & permitted clean up of asbestos to be put off for more than fifty years after it was nominally known to be extremely hazardous. If the government declared dental amalgams definitively harmful, the lawsuits would increase by factors of thousands. The hope is that the dental industry will voluntarily correct its behavior before that is necessary, but it will probably take government action before what does need to be done is done. But for the greater whop-a-doodle levels of sickness that are not so frought with subjectivity, & for which causal links are firmly established, exposures must generally be greater than from amalgams, needing the extra kick of industrial activity, waste disposal, spills, contaminated products such as Chinese medicines or imported facial creams, or such grotesque cases as the Illinois boy who stole mercury from a school lab, covered his body with it to play Tin Man of Oz, permanently damaging himself neurologically & making the family home uninhabitable for ten months with expensive clean-up by the EPA. Other severe cases include eating contaminated pork & farm-fish that had been given mercury-contaminated feeds, contaminated water, living near or working in mines or along rivers into which mining contaminants are dumped, or near coal-burning plants or plants that use boilers, or near medical & hazardous waste incinerators. After a couple centuries western physicians finally caught on & stopped recommending it for illnesses it was more apt to cause than cure. But in Chinese & Tibetan herbal medicines or dietary supplements, the most active ingredients are frequently mercury & arsenic. Herbal hypochondriacs who have Romantic superstitions about Chinese Traditional Medicine are at particular risk. One study of Chinese herbal compounds, undertaken by the California Department of Health Services, ran analyses on 251 Asian herbal medicines & found that 14% contained toxic levels of mercury, 14% toxic levels of arsenic, besides such deadly herbs as birthwart, monkshood, & foxglove that are banned for such use in the US & never listed as confessed ingredients. A UK study found that some Chinese medicines as much or more than 11% mercury, which was either not mentioned on the labels or was mentioned only in Chinese; other Chinese medicines purporting to be herbal turned out to contain as their active ingredients cortico steroids or glibenclamide (a drug for diabetics). So when "believers" in this crap feel it really has an effect on them, they're quite right! But do they know that what they're responding to is not Natural Herbal Medicines, but steroids, diabetic drugs, mercury, & arsenic? The "wise" Chinese Traditional take on mercury is it causes longevity & good health, basing its use on astrological charts rather than on effects on human subjects. The majority of the products are of the sucker-born-every-minute type. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
In article , wrote:
Doug Kanter wrote: Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". Give it up, Kanater. The election is over, you guys didn't even have a candidate this year. You're only half right. It ain't over & even a dog's pecker wearing a straw hat has a good chance of being rightly perceived as the superior choice when Bush is the other opption. But you're right insofar as it is a bloody shame there wasn't a candidate so qualified that it didn't need to be this down-to-the-wire photo-finish before we know if Bush gets to be Lord of Destruction four more years. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:59:36 -0700,
(paghat) posted: In article , wrote: Doug Kanter wrote: Write to the pig in the White House and tell him you're aware of his crimes. Then, vote correctly and send him back to his so-called "ranch". Give it up, Kanater. The election is over, you guys didn't even have a candidate this year. You're only half right. It ain't over & even a dog's pecker wearing a straw hat has a good chance of being rightly perceived as the superior choice when Bush is the other opption. But you're right insofar as it is a bloody shame there wasn't a candidate so qualified that it didn't need to be this down-to-the-wire photo-finish before we know if Bush gets to be Lord of Destruction four more years. -paghat the ratgirl Yer funny. Smart, too. Probably cuter than a daisy in a cornfield. But the French-looking one doesn't really stand a chance. Never did. So solly. But Spring blossoms will still burst forth next year, so who rilly, rilly cares? What I want to know is will my Rosemary die this winter like last winter? Yeah, I know, it's hard to die twice, but -- Implanted |
In article , "mulroys"
wrote: Hey Doug, Why didn't Clintler do anything about all that mercury? Our pinhead Bushleaguer president squashed Bill Clinton's ten-year mercury clean-up plan. The plan was not nearly strong enough, it is true, because it already incorporated cave-ins to the Republican-dominated Congress that would not permit clean-up to actually begin. But at least Clinton did get mercury placed on the list of hazardous air pollutants. This categorization, without the Republican interference, meant that power plants & boiier-using, coal-burning, & waste-incinerating industries would be forced to have scrubbers able to remove mercury that was then (and alas still is) expelled directly into the atmosphere. Almost as soon as the Bush administration came in, they removed it form the list of Hazardous Air Pollutants, so that industry can continue to release tons & tons & tons of the stuff into the atmosphere. In a statement policy with no status as law, the Bush administration recommends mercury-polluting industries do something about in fifteen years, which year-count can begin in 2005. Because the Republican Congress then Bush personally effectively kept the half-reasonable Clinton plan from being put into effect, the Bush spin today is that the Bush administration is the FIRST to ever have the EPA enforce mercury air pollution restrictions. The reality of what the EPA has been instructed to oversee is, unsurprisingly, quite the opposite of Bush's claims: Bush replaced Clinton's ten-year plan with an alternate "cap and trade" policy that permitted various polluting industries to trade pollution quotas: for example, an industry spewing arsenic can continue to do so if it can trade its unused mercury quota to a mercury-spewing plant. Bush claims this method will eventually reduce mercury pollution by half, or even more than half, but as spin goes, that's a pretty pathetic lie. If the Bush policy remains, the issue won't even be revisited for 15 years, & in the meantime polluters will be trading in quotas to keep from reducing any emissions at all. By comparison, 1991 EPA documents show that they expected to reduce mercury air emmissions by 90% by 1908 if the Clinton plan could have been put into effect. The Bush plan insures 0% lowering of emissions by permitting pollutors to trade pollution quotas. Republicans continuously declared the Clinton plan too expensive, technnically difficult without new clean-up science, & harmful to the profits of the affected industries, & the ten-year count-down never started. Yet the issue remains important to many grass-roots & environmental movements with some powerhouse legal angles still in play, so Bush made fake concessions in the "cap and trade policy" which is a complete scam that effectively cancelled out any need to reduce emissions for another fifteen years. Even Clinton's plan was far from sufficient, but it was a start. Bush's fakery over the issue insures nothing will be done. Not until we have far fewer Republicans controlling these issues, & a very different kind of president. In the meantime, a small amount of mercury clean-up is occuring because of reigional municipality regulations; but federal cut-backs & diminishing tax base has not permitted even these small regionally limited hopes of improvement to be enforced. Also on the good side, the Bush administration has no big-business interests in altering the Clean Water Act (mercury clean-up portion in the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments), so Bush has not reversed that part of the protection, though industry interests in dumping arsenic directly into water did convince him to reverse that water pollution protection. The relative effectiveness of the Clean Water Act is also why Clinton focused his attention on mercury as a hazardous air pollutant, one of the largest remaining areas that has been allowed to keep polluting. The Clinton proposals would also have hugely reduced nitrous oxide emissions (which form smog); the Bush fake regulations put the kabosh on that too, so it's up to local municipalities to pass their own laws if any are to exist; federally, it's open season on polluting the atmosphere. As for changing this with the upcoming election, Kerry's record is wishywashy in most categories, but on health & environment he scores fairly well. In most issues Kerry's mediocre to lousy & Bush's charge of flipflops is alas accurate, except where the environment is concerned, Kerry has an excellent legislative record on that, contrasting to Bush whose policies have been downright monstrous & destructive. So in this one area, Kerry is a strongly viable candidate for public & environmental health. It will doubtless still be an uphill struggle with Republicans dominating a congress & not budging until abortion is a capital crime punishable as murder, queers are constitutionally denied equal rights, all Jews & Moslems in the public school system are forced to pray to Jesus & taught that evolution is a theory but God is a fact, industries on whose boards they'll again serve when they leave office have a freehand to lay waste to the planet while paying no taxes, & everyone's library card registers in the Homefront office what you're checking out to read. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
In article ,
(paghat) wrote: In article , "mulroys" wrote: Hey Doug, Why didn't Clintler do anything about all that mercury? Our pinhead Bushleaguer president squashed Bill Clinton's ten-year mercury clean-up plan. The plan was not nearly strong enough, it is true, because it already incorporated cave-ins to the Republican-dominated Congress that would not permit clean-up to actually begin. But at least Clinton did get mercury placed on the list of hazardous air pollutants. This categorization, without the Republican interference, meant that power plants & boiier-using, coal-burning, & waste-incinerating industries would be forced to have scrubbers able to remove mercury that was then (and alas still is) expelled directly into the atmosphere. Almost as soon as the Bush administration came in, they removed it form the list of Hazardous Air Pollutants, so that industry can continue to release tons & tons & tons of the stuff into the atmosphere. In a statement policy with no status as law, the Bush administration recommends mercury-polluting industries do something about in fifteen years, which year-count can begin in 2005. Because the Republican Congress then Bush personally effectively kept the half-reasonable Clinton plan from being put into effect, the Bush spin today is that the Bush administration is the FIRST to ever have the EPA enforce mercury air pollution restrictions. The reality of what the EPA has been instructed to oversee is, unsurprisingly, quite the opposite of Bush's claims: Bush replaced Clinton's ten-year plan with an alternate "cap and trade" policy that permitted various polluting industries to trade pollution quotas: for example, an industry spewing arsenic can continue to do so if it can trade its unused mercury quota to a mercury-spewing plant. Bush claims this method will eventually reduce mercury pollution by half, or even more than half, but as spin goes, that's a pretty pathetic lie. If the Bush policy remains, the issue won't even be revisited for 15 years, & in the meantime polluters will be trading in quotas to keep from reducing any emissions at all. By comparison, 1991 EPA documents show that they expected to reduce mercury air emmissions by 90% by 1908 heh heh, by 2008. if the Clinton plan could have been put into effect. The Bush plan insures 0% lowering of emissions by permitting pollutors to trade pollution quotas. Republicans continuously declared the Clinton plan too expensive, technnically difficult without new clean-up science, & harmful to the profits of the affected industries, & the ten-year count-down never started. Yet the issue remains important to many grass-roots & environmental movements with some powerhouse legal angles still in play, so Bush made fake concessions in the "cap and trade policy" which is a complete scam that effectively cancelled out any need to reduce emissions for another fifteen years. Even Clinton's plan was far from sufficient, but it was a start. Bush's fakery over the issue insures nothing will be done. Not until we have far fewer Republicans controlling these issues, & a very different kind of president. In the meantime, a small amount of mercury clean-up is occuring because of reigional municipality regulations; but federal cut-backs & diminishing tax base has not permitted even these small regionally limited hopes of improvement to be enforced. Also on the good side, the Bush administration has no big-business interests in altering the Clean Water Act (mercury clean-up portion in the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments), so Bush has not reversed that part of the protection, though industry interests in dumping arsenic directly into water did convince him to reverse that water pollution protection. The relative effectiveness of the Clean Water Act is also why Clinton focused his attention on mercury as a hazardous air pollutant, one of the largest remaining areas that has been allowed to keep polluting. The Clinton proposals would also have hugely reduced nitrous oxide emissions (which form smog); the Bush fake regulations put the kabosh on that too, so it's up to local municipalities to pass their own laws if any are to exist; federally, it's open season on polluting the atmosphere. As for changing this with the upcoming election, Kerry's record is wishywashy in most categories, but on health & environment he scores fairly well. In most issues Kerry's mediocre to lousy & Bush's charge of flipflops is alas accurate, except where the environment is concerned, Kerry has an excellent legislative record on that, contrasting to Bush whose policies have been downright monstrous & destructive. So in this one area, Kerry is a strongly viable candidate for public & environmental health. It will doubtless still be an uphill struggle with Republicans dominating a congress & not budging until abortion is a capital crime punishable as murder, queers are constitutionally denied equal rights, all Jews & Moslems in the public school system are forced to pray to Jesus & taught that evolution is a theory but God is a fact, industries on whose boards they'll again serve when they leave office have a freehand to lay waste to the planet while paying no taxes, & everyone's library card registers in the Homefront office what you're checking out to read. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
Dang girl!
Now I know more about mercury poisoning than I would have ever imagined :) Thanks for the info... seriously. That was quite intersting! Kate "paghat" wrote in message ... | In article et, | "SVTKate" wrote: | | My grandfather was a gold miner. | "Back in the day" before anyone knew any better, he used quicksilver to | separate the gold out from the quartz. | In his later years, he went crazy. I think it was due to Mercury Poisoning. | I don't even think that they put mercury in thermometers anymore do they? | | Kate | | Right, it's not in thermometers anymore. But I can remember breaking a | thermometer as a kid, rollikng the mercury around in the palm of my hand, | & putting it in a small pill bottle to keep in a little rock collection -- | then being sad that it evaporated. Its dangers were not unknown yet at the | time every household had several easily broken glass thermometers laying | about, for checking fevers or weather thermometers. That's a danger now of | the past. | | It was once widely used as a medicine for treatment of minor & severe | illnesses from acne to syphyllus. Its side-effects included kidney | failure, dissolving the spine & other bone loss, gum loss, tooth loss, | nail discoloration, hair loss, Crohn's disease & other severe | gastrointestinal illness, cardiovascular disease, severe fatigue, mental | deterioration, memory loss, moodiness, & madness, palsy, seizure | disorders, blindness, deafness, damage to central nervous system, | neurological disorders, language difficulty, diminished motor skills, | Cushing's syndrome, endocrine disturbances. | | When a large toxic exposure occurs the health issues that result are | severe & unmistakable. At lower but persistent exposures, mercury may pass | undetected as the cause of Guillian-Barre syndrome, long-term memory loss, | dementia, & senility, colitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, & many other | problems for which a causal link to mercury is difficult to prove but | which many researchers suspect. Dental amalgam, normal amounts of mercury | in even wild-caught fish, & evaporative levels accumulating in basements, | may well be contributing factors. | | "Causal link" is the key word here. Many health problems have been shown | beyond any statistical dought to have an increased incidence in people | with mercury in their teeth. They study that started the debat was a 1993 | compilation of 1,569 patients from four countries with an array of minor | symptoms potentially associated with mercury poisoning, chiefly memory | difficulties & chronic fatigue (another area difficult to quantify beyond | each patient's own subjectivity). All 1,569 patients had their dental | amalgams removed, with an 80% recovery rate for the sufferers. This is a | highly indicative study, but it analyzed existing case studies that were | not set up to prove any causal link. But a second study of 2,000 | additional cases undertaken in Germany had the same high rates of recovery | after removal of mercury amalgams. | | The American Dental Association has remained stubborn about acting on such | findings on the basis of there being no "causal link" firmly established. | And by now they don't dare take a belated stand or dentists will risk | being sued out of existance by everyone with so much as a headache or | recurring fatigue because all mercury fillings done since the early 1990s | can certainly be regarded as legally & medically a known risk that | dentists consciously decided to ignore. Such lawsuits are already being | brought, which puts the ADA in the sorry position of having to support | growing numbers of dentists who've done the wrong thing, & their best | method of support right now is to deny it is the wrong thing to do. The | ADA actively threatens anti-amalgam dentists who speak openly about the | current science, because the ADA rightly believes such concerned dentists | who refuse to stick to the party line are a threat to dentists | collectively. And dentists have left the ADA in droves over this issue; | half of all dentists under the age of thirty-five with more modern | awareness of their trade never join the ADA at all. | | Yet the studies keep coming. A University of Kentucky study established | conclusively that people who die of Alzheimer syndrome have twice as much | mercury in their systems as is normal. Low-level but ongoing exposure from | such sources as fillings have been implicated "a possible factor" in | multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, & Parkinson's disease. The near | impossibility of turning statistical likelihood into definitive causal | link is what made it possible for the tobacco industry to pretend for | decades that cigarettes were harmless, & permitted clean up of asbestos to | be put off for more than fifty years after it was nominally known to be | extremely hazardous. If the government declared dental amalgams | definitively harmful, the lawsuits would increase by factors of thousands. | The hope is that the dental industry will voluntarily correct its behavior | before that is necessary, but it will probably take government action | before what does need to be done is done. | | But for the greater whop-a-doodle levels of sickness that are not so | frought with subjectivity, & for which causal links are firmly | established, exposures must generally be greater than from amalgams, | needing the extra kick of industrial activity, waste disposal, spills, | contaminated products such as Chinese medicines or imported facial creams, | or such grotesque cases as the Illinois boy who stole mercury from a | school lab, covered his body with it to play Tin Man of Oz, permanently | damaging himself neurologically & making the family home uninhabitable for | ten months with expensive clean-up by the EPA. Other severe cases include | eating contaminated pork & farm-fish that had been given | mercury-contaminated feeds, contaminated water, living near or working in | mines or along rivers into which mining contaminants are dumped, or near | coal-burning plants or plants that use boilers, or near medical & | hazardous waste incinerators. | | After a couple centuries western physicians finally caught on & stopped | recommending it for illnesses it was more apt to cause than cure. But in | Chinese & Tibetan herbal medicines or dietary supplements, the most active | ingredients are frequently mercury & arsenic. Herbal hypochondriacs who | have Romantic superstitions about Chinese Traditional Medicine are at | particular risk. One study of Chinese herbal compounds, undertaken by the | California Department of Health Services, ran analyses on 251 Asian herbal | medicines & found that 14% contained toxic levels of mercury, 14% toxic | levels of arsenic, besides such deadly herbs as birthwart, monkshood, & | foxglove that are banned for such use in the US & never listed as | confessed ingredients. A UK study found that some Chinese medicines as | much or more than 11% mercury, which was either not mentioned on the | labels or was mentioned only in Chinese; other Chinese medicines | purporting to be herbal turned out to contain as their active ingredients | cortico steroids or glibenclamide (a drug for diabetics). So when | "believers" in this crap feel it really has an effect on them, they're | quite right! But do they know that what they're responding to is not | Natural Herbal Medicines, but steroids, diabetic drugs, mercury, & | arsenic? | | The "wise" Chinese Traditional take on mercury is it causes longevity & | good health, basing its use on astrological charts rather than on effects | on human subjects. The majority of the products are of the | sucker-born-every-minute type. | | -paghat the ratgirl | | -- | "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. | "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. | -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" | Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
One other thing to note...
The toxicity of Mercury is more evident when body weight is lower. This is pretty much a general truth about all toxic materials. The real meaning is that kids are more susceptible to poisons than are adults, so what may not affect you, holds much greater opportunities to affect a child. This is true for cigarette smoking as well. I firmly stand behind the fact that cigarette smoking and second-hand cigarette smoke represents the leading cause of asthma in children. And once the lungs are damaged at a young age, they remain damaged for life. People do not just get asthma all of a sudden for some unfathomed reason. I will leave these statements open to debate. :-) -- Jim Carlock Post replies to the newsgroup. |
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