Contact: Jennifer Feyerherm office: 608/257-4994; cell: 608/695-5797
Madison, WI – Madisonians lined up to get tested for mercury poisoning today at the Cha Cha hair salon, all wondering just how much of this potent neurotoxin they carry in their bodies.
They have reason to be concerned. One in six women of childbearing age already has enough mercury in her body to put a fetus at risk of developmental disorders and learning disabilities. All of Wisconsin’s lakes rivers and streams have mercury advisories.
Coal-fired power plants emit mercury into our air, where it rains down into our rivers and streams and finds its way to our bodies via contaminated fish. Readily-available, cost-effective pollution controls can cut the mercury coming out of coal-fired power plants by 90 percent and more. Cleaner fuels do not emit any mercury.
“I like fish and I’m angry that I can’t eat it,” explains Kate Spranger, a resident of Madison. “I am a nursing mom and I can’t take the risk of exposing my son to mercury. Why put mercury in the air if you don’t have to?”
Here in Dane County, Madison Gas and Electric’s coal-fired Blount Street Station operates without mercury pollution controls and is the largest source of mercury to our air. It stands in stark contrast to MG&E’s other Madison power plant, the West Campus Cogeneration Facility, that emits no mercury at all.
Madison is exploring options to address pollution from the Blount Street plant. This Monday, December 12, the city of Madison’s Commission on the Environment is holding a public hearing to get input from Madison residents about pollution from the plant. Following short presentations from MG&E, the Sierra Club, the City of Madison Health Department, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, we will all have a chance to voice our concerns. The hearing will be at 6pm in Room 201 of the City/County Building at 215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
The Sierra Club is co-sponsoring the testing project with Greenpeace. The test involves cutting a small sample of hair and sending it to an academic laboratory, the Environmental Quality Institute at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, which will process the results. The participant’s data will also be added anonymously to a UNC research study, which will have the largest sample size of any study to date, on the effects of mercury in the U.S. population.
Women who missed the testing event today can purchase a testing kit online for a small non-profit fee at www.sierraclub.org/mercury.
