Environmental Protection Agency
EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC)
Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center, 6102T
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
Attention Docket ID No. OAR-2002-0056

RE: My comments--Protect women and children from mercury poisoning!

Dear EPA,

Thank you for considering my comments to Docket ID No. OAR-2002-0056 for "Proposed National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants; and, in the Alternative, Proposed Standards of Performance for New and Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Steam Generating Units." I strongly urge you to create a strong regulation that protects women and children from mercury poisoning.

The current mercury proposal does not go far enough in reducing pollution from power plants. The EPA plan would allow power plants to continue polluting our air with 34 tons of mercury a year by 2010, and one proposal would delay 70 percent of all power plant reductions to 2018.

The EPA also proposes a cap-and-trade program for power plant emissions. Under this system, dirty utilities could buy credits from cleaner plants to meet the industry target, allowing some plants in the country to continue contaminating nearby areas and create "hot spots."

As an American citizen and consumer, I am deeply concerned about eating fish with mercury poisoning. I am aware that women and children are particularly at risk. A recent EPA study found that over 15 percent of American women of childbearing age have dangerously elevated mercury levels from eating polluted fish. Mercury passed from mother to fetus can cause brain damage and other development problems.

I am also outraged that the current proposal contains language lifted directly from documents by Latham & Watkins, a law firm representing the power plant industry. This is all the more distressing given that EPA official Jeffrey Holmstead, who engineered this proposal, previously worked for this very law firm.

Power plants represent the single largest source of all mercury pollution. We can reduce mercury pollution by 90 percent without too much cost to the industry. We need to do more to protect public health than releasing fish advisories. Two years ago, EPA's own scientists said current technologies could eliminate 90 percent of power plants' mercury emissions.

Please do not trade our women and children’s health for corporate benefits. Please uphold your responsibility to the American people by taking immediate steps to rapidly cut mercury pollution by 90 percent!