Mercury Pollution Hurts Everywhere

For the last 15 years, a small group of people who were smart enough to buy electric cars like the Toyota RAV 4 EV, have been charging them using solar panels on their home roof tops. That's right- no oil, gas, fumes, nothing, 15 years, no problems at all. The best EV (electric vehicle)was arguably the General Motors EV1, but it never really was sold, only leased, and when the leases expired, the cars were crushed. Meanwhile, 15 years later, GM is trying to hoodwink us into thinking the volt is anything other than a glorified oil burner like the rest. The Nissan Leaf is now being released, but in small numbers, despite the huge demand. Just think- all electric and all solar on all rooftops= no 4 trillion dollar wars, no gulf spill, no warming, no murcury. Ask your congressman- "Where are the electric cars?" EV1DOTorg

SBRC (now Raytheon) grew and processed HgCdTe crystals used in IR detectors at Hollister and Glen Annie for years on R&D contracts, and production is now done in Santa Maria. From my experience, SBPD and SBFD ignore calls regarding adults showing young children how cool mercury is (liquid mercury really IS fun to watch, is odorless, and has a high vapor pressure. Most cases of mercury toxicity are caused by exposure to undetectable mercury vapor in air, and children are much more susceptible than adults). One of my kids had a potentially fatal autoimmune disease that can recur throughout life as a result of mercury exposure.

Good on Congressman Capps and her staff for working to help make sure the EPA gets in place this nation's first set of standards for getting mercury and other heavy metals out of our air, water, and food.

Here's a list of the most common sources of mercury pollution in the U.S.:

http://www.rodale.com/mercury-polluti...

And here's crystal clear evidence of how politicians and the coal industry have been trying to avoid installing scrubbing equipment in their plants, going so far as to deny mercury and heavy metals are bad for you (incredible!):

http://www.grist.org/pollution/2011-0...

Note the hypocrisy of George W. Bush's former political appointee to the EPA, Jeff Holmstead, cited at the end of the article. I say we make him a mercury-milkshake and see if he man's up to drink it :)

It is great that our Congressional Representative is actually writing up an important environmental issue rather than just rest on her laurels like 99% of the "electeds" who only speak out when they have the pomp and circumstance of the spotlight. Love her or disdain her, you have to admit that Lois Capps is the Congressional Energizer Bunny Rabbit, an indefatigable source, depending on your perspective, of insightful, capable leadership, or of annoying new ways to pester Rebuplicans with new thorns in their collective side.

In the Spirit of Paul Revere, I offer these e flections upon Congresswoman Capp's contest with the nefarious Coal Industry:

This new concern with Hg pollution only underlines the 80,000 ton Godzilla/King Kong in the planetary living room: once we get rid of that coal pollution, then what?

Are we going to

(A) WARM THE GLOBE INTO PLANET MERCURY 2.0??
This will happen if we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere? This would turn God's green Earth into a gigantic suana, wiping out Agriculture as we know it, and probably causing an Accelerated Mass Extinction, interminable Resource Wars (masquerading as The Will of the Almighty, Liberation, etc.)

OR

(B) Are we going to countenance an ever-increasing Tower of Babel not going UPWARDS to the heavens, but rather tunneling deeper DOWN into every nook and cranny that will have it, to wit,

TONS OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL??

Added bonus: now but particularly when fast breeders become "popular", spent nuclear reactor fuel doubles as a handy dandy source of weapons grade plutonium...

IMAGINE: Thermonuclear Weapons in the hands of the North Koreans and the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the leadership of the successor of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-s... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_...

the progenitor of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_...

So where is the leadership? Where is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation? Where is the Dalai Lama? The Archbishop of Canterbury? Where is the George Washington? Who is going to step up and make order out of the plantetary train wreck which is surely going to make the Deluge of Noah look like a dress rehearsal?

All I know is that http://www.appropedia.org/Amory_Lovins does not hold the key. Nice try, but windmills won't erase the spent fuel dumps nor will they reverse global climate change. It's all a day late and a dollar short.

Nothing he suggests will deal with the fact that we are stuck with a choice between a planetary hothouse or a plutonium dump. More and more people every second, and they all want cars and i-pods and big houses...so yes Mercury is bad. We know this. But when Representative Capps gets on the plane, she will use as much petroleum as an entire family in Mexico uses in a year. We need a breakthrough in energy technology AND in political science. Nothing less will work, and Hg is really the LEAST of our worries...

Easy there, Geof_Bard.

Reducing mercury and heavy metals pollution is very do-able, we have the technology now (as do other countries), rules/enforcement can be implemented, and benefits will appear in short order.

No argument peak oil and climate change are serious problems for our kids/grand-kids (as are the intransigence of ideologues) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pick off lower-hanging fruit while we work the tougher long-term issues at the same time.

"So, Lois Capps suffers from mercury poisoning. That may explain her confused, stupid rants and ideas."
--bigt

Stay classy, bigt. Stay classy.

Cant wait for the Tom Watson counter punch explaining how the defanging of the EPA , which occurs every time Republicans control congress, will benefit business and commerce. He will sweep the little problem of mercury contamination under he rug , and extol the virtues of getting the EPA off the back of business in the name of job creation.
Yup , Tom , low wage jobs with no health plan to treat mercury poisoning .

Why even have an EPA if all you want to do is assign the task to your buddy who will not do his job? Seems like the last republican administration was wasting a lot of our tax dollars on this kind of stay at home work. Heck of a job brownie ??!!?!?

Truly amazing how ideological indoctrination rears it's ugly head when discussing removing Mercury from our environment and protecting our children. Rigid self awareness features like this that prevent bringing people together for the common good should be identified as the psychosis that it is... fear of anything that is not exactly in your past and future oriented thought matrix? Get help... try some LSD... that will flatline your rigid ego pattern and release you from chronic stimulus response patterns that prevent you from being a caring and loving human being, and give you a glimpse into the present moment... a place you have probably spent little time in recent years... possibly since you were a child.