Texas
Making Texas Mercury Free: Clean Water, Safe Fish and Healthy Kids
Mercury Threatens Our Water, Fish and Health
When mercury is released into the air, it settles in rivers, lakes, and streams. Bacteria in the water convert it to methyl mercury, a very toxic form of mercury. The toxic mercury builds up (bioaccumulates) in the bodies of animals.
Eating contaminated fish is the main way people are exposed to unsafe levels of mercury. Unlike with some pathogens, there is no way to clean or cook mercury out of fish.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that causes learning and developmental disabilities in children. A mother can pass mercury on to her baby during pregnancy and later during breastfeeding. Mercury is also associated with heart attacks in older men.
The Texas Department of Health has issued fish consumption advisories for over 329,000 acres of lakes and rivers, including the entire Gulf of Mexico. (Source: Texas Department of Health)
1 in 6 U.S. women of childbearing age have mercury in their bodies at levels that may adversely affect their unborn child. (Source: Indiana Department of Environmental Management)
Sources of Mercury
Most of Texas's mercury contamination comes from coal-burning power plants. Clean Water Action and our allies in the Alliance for a Clean Texas are urging the Texas Legislature to require that power plants reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur by 75% from 1997 levels, and mercury by 90% at all coal-burning power plants within the next few years. This matches reductions in the Clean Power Act / Clean Smokestacks Act that have been introduced in Congress. Other states have now taken action or are in the process of taking actions to protect the health of citizens from power plant pollution, including Connecticut, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Illinois, and Iowa.
