http://wvmetronews.com/2015/03/25/the-epas-fish-story/
The EPA’s fish story
Commentary by Hoppy Kercheval, MetroNews Talkline, March 25, 2015
Fifteen percent of all babies in utero in West Virginia have mothers who are subsistence fisherwomen — each of whom eats up to 300 pounds of fish every year that they or their family caught themselves from lakes.
Well, at least that is the contention of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Today the U.S. Supreme court takes up challenges to the EPA’s proposed new standards for emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants. The agency proposes that those emissions be cut by between 75 and 90 percent starting next year.
That would seem to be a good thing. As the New York Times opined this week, “One of the most toxic of these pollutants is mercury, a heavy metal that accumulates in waterways and the fish American’s eat.” It can be dangerous for young children and fetuses.
The EPA argues that the potential health benefits justify the new rules, which will be yet another blow to the coal industry and coal-fired power plants. But the EPA has strained mightily to try to explain how domestic power plant emissions, which account for about one-half of one percent of all mercury in the atmosphere, are so dangerous that they justify spending almost $10 billion per year to reduce them.
And that brings us back to the fisherwomen.
The EPA has created a hypothetical population of women of child-bearing age who catch and ingest huge amounts of lake fish that contain high levels of mercury to try to demonstrate the risk. According to the agency’s calculations, there are about 240,000 pregnant women per year in America who supposedly live off of fish caught by themselves or their families in lakes.
The agency then further calculates that the IQ of children born to these fisherwomen would be lowered by an average of 0.009 of a point because of neurotoxins in mercury, an utterly insignificant number when you consider the error range for IQ tests is between five and ten points. The EPA model contends the diminished IQ will result in an annual loss of future earnings of about $6 million per year for all individuals.
The EPA even breaks out the alleged impact by state. According to the agency’s numbers, about 15 percent of all births in West Virginia in 2005 (3,042 babies) were to subsistence fisherwomen who caught and ate up to six pounds of lake fish a week. As one person tweeted to me yesterday, “It’s no wonder I can’t catch any fish lately; all the pregnant women are catching/eating them.”
But there’s more.
The EPA says when power plants are forced to install equipment to reduce mercury there will be “co-benefits” from the removal of other pollutants that will generate up to $90 billion annually in additional health benefits.
However, as attorney Brian Potts pointed out in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “The EPA has acknowledged that more than 90 percent of the mercury rule’s ‘co-benefits’ occur at air-quality levels the EPA itself says are already safe.”
The EPA’s numbers sound official enough, but they’re clearly absurd to everyone… except the EPA and its acolytes who keep searching for ways to expand the agency’s authority to shut down coal-fired power plants.
That’s something to contemplate the next time you are wetting a line and chatting with the pregnant woman next to you.
Duane Nichols, www.FrackCheckWV.net