Mercury Manifesto: Commonwealth Edison, EPA, and the Poisoning of Chicago

The press release caught my eye.

“The US Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public hearing on May 24, 2011 in Chicago on the proposed national standards for mercury pollution from power plants.

“New power plant mercury and air toxics standards would require many power plants to install pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases."

I couldn’t overlook this for a bunch of reasons.

First, I knew that it doesn’t take much mercury to poison a person.

Second, it’s hard to fathom quantities at the extreme ends of the measurement spectrum, given that the universe is as small as quarks in the particles that make up an atom of matter and as big as the space needed to fit billions of galaxies with plenty of room left over.

Third, as a high school science teacher, I have used EPA statistics on mercury poisoning as a means to teach the methods for putting into proper perspective what amounts to extremely large and extremely small quantities of things.

Midwest Generation Crawford Station on Pulaski, Little Village neighborhood

Fourth, I have known that two of Illinois’ oldest and dirtiest coal-fired electrical generating plants, Fisk and Crawford, are within the city limits of Chicago where I have worked for over four years.

It’s been widely publicized just how dirty these plants are. For instance, Fisk and Crawford, together, cost neighboring communities $127 million per year in hidden health damages, according to a report released in October, 2010 by the Environmental Law and Policy Center. The Clean Air Task Force found that air pollution from these two plants causes more than 40 deaths, 720 asthma attacks, and 66 heart attacks annually.

Finally, I realized that the hearing was just a brisk walk from the school where I teach, at the Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro, located at 733 West Madison Street in downtown Chicago.

Fisk, located in the Pilson neighborhood, and the downtown Chicago skyline

So never mind that the hearing was to be held right in the middle of my proctoring final exams. I felt I had to show up. And I knew exactly what I would be taking to the hearing if I was allowed to speak: classroom lesson demos of my mercury unit conversions.

Though a typical lumbering governmental bureaucracy, the EPA holds a tenuous place in national public affairs. Mandated to protect the health interests of citizens when they're faced with potential environmental hazards caused by industry, it’s been buffeted back and forth by bureaucrats who occupy both sides of the isle. Instituted by the most quintessentially Republican president, Richard Nixon, in 1970 (wait, Ronald Reagan holds that distinction), it’s been Republicans who lately have been out to emasculate its ability to enforce such things as the Clean Air Act. The EPA is bad for industry profits, held dear in the hearts of the many Republican owners of the means of production.

But the EPA is a good cop who, like a Boy Scout helping an old lady cross the street, might get a laugh from this Joe Citizen whose health they are mandated to protect. Even so, getting into the queue to talk to the EPA folks at the hearing took some back and forth with its handlers.

“The public may register to speak at a specific time at a hearing by contacting Pamela Garrett at garrett.pamela@epa.gov or registering in person on the day of a hearing. EPA also will accept written comments on the proposed standards until July 5, 2011. EPA will finalize the rule by November 2011.”

Pamela G. Garrett, US EPA, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Dear Ms. Garrert:

Please give me a 5 minute slot sometime after 2 pm to speak at the Hearing regarding mercury pollution.

Dear Mr. DePrez:

Atlanta is the only hearing location that has open slots. You did not mention which location, Atlanta, Chicago, or Philadelphia.

If you would like to show up at Chicago the team will try their best to work you in to speak. They are willing to cut into the lunch and dinner hour and possibly go beyond the 8:00 conclusion to give everyone a chance to speak. If you decide to try to be worked in, I need to know in order to have a list for the team, and you will need to plan on possibly being there for several hours to be worked in. Please let me know as soon as possible if you think you will be in attendance.

Dear Ms. Garrett:

Chicago, sorry. Work me in. I would need an overhead projector to make my points. It would take 2 minutes.

Dear Mr. DePrez:

You are on the wait list. Would you provide me with your address and phone number for our records? Thank you.

Midwest Generation Fisk Station in the Little Village neighborhood

The walk downtown was on a brilliantly sunny day in May, and it was hard to think that such pristine air was passively aggressive in its pernicious program to poison me with mercury. But the horror stories come from the EPA itself.

A concentration of 0.0005 mg (milligrams)/L (liter) of mercury is lethal. (That's five ten- thousandths of a milligram. There are 1000 mg in a gram and about 16 grams in an ounce.)

For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of mercury is impaired neurological development.

Symptoms include: tremor, emotional change, insomnia, neuro- muscular changes, headaches, disturbances in sensations, changes in nerve response, performance deficits on tests of cognitive function.

Such grim reaper statistics couldn’t put a pall on the frolic by the “baby buggy brigade” of moms with their kids in strollers protesting outside the hearing. I reminded myself that humor is a great way to habilitate the horror that we often end up facing as we navigate the uncertainties of life. I went in and started bugging the folks at the folding tables to get me onto the list of presenters. “We’ll try to work you in,” they said. “Sign up here.”

No they didn’t have an overhead transparency projector. Sigh. Underfunded education can’t give every teacher access to a laptop computer and projector, which the EPA had set up for presenters. So I had to find a way to photocopy my calculations to just hand the EPA guys if I got a chance. The hotel clerk was great helping me out.

The hall was packed. Kids were everywhere. Environmental groups sure knew that kids in costumes carried a rhetorical advantage. Mardi Gras at the Mercury Muck Musings. Electric utility industry reps were noticeably absent. But I got in! And it was just an hour later.

The four panelists looked bored. I was paired with a presenter who discussed the health statistics for possible mercury-induced ailments at a local city free health clinic. When it was my turn, I handed the four EPA panelists a set of calculations. They smiled wanly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for a chance to share with you how I teach my science students to make sense of statistics.

“In this case, it’s you guys who give the lethal dosage of mercury, which is 0.0005 mg/L. And here’s the stated annual amount of mercury in pounds, 1,700, that the the seven Illinois Com Ed plants produce as a byproduct of burning coal.

“We fight a losing battle converting kids to metric, but metric is the rule. So, in milligrams, it looks like the plants annually put out 3,700,000,000 mg of mercury (Hg is the chemical symbol).

“We will now merge the milligrams to the toxicity concentration of mercury. We will solve for x through cross multiplication and canceling units so we can scale up to the number of liters this much mercury would pollute to human toxicity if it were somehow allowed to diffuse to that level of concentration in the blood of a human.

“We must follow the significant figures rules for handling measured amounts. We must also be sure that it’s set up to cancel units of measure so the answer is simply in liters. Notice the use of scientific notation so that we’re not having to write out long, unwieldy numbers.

“So the answer is 1 x 10¹³ liters. It’s hard to visualize that much water, so let’s convert it to gallons. A liter is the equivalent of 0.25 gallons or 2.5 x 10^-1 gallons. Cancelling liters and converting to standard notation, yes, it’s 3,000,000,000,000 or 3 trillion gallons.

“But here’s the clincher. How does one fathom that much water? It’s kinda hard. So lets imagine how much of Lake Michigan this much water would fill.

“Lake Michigan is one of the Great Lakes and is right next to Chicago. It’s filled with 1.3 x 10¹⁵ gallons of fresh water. The water that could be polluted by Com Ed’s annual pooping of mercury is 3 x 10¹² gallons. That’s 0.2% of Lake Michigan, or two tenths of one percent.

“Aw, what’s so bad about that? Doesn’t seem like much, but wait. The great Lakes are the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. So let’s do one last calculation. How many years would it take, at the rate of Com’s Ed’s polluting, and imagining that all of it ended up in the lake fully diluted, to raise the level of concentration to human toxicity?

“Answer: 500 years. Oh, the potential power that a couple of smoke stacks command!” Some nervous laughter broke out in the audience.

I excused myself politely at that point, thanking the panel, which returned the favor. At the break, I was surrounded by moms in funny costumes who wanted to know more about my programs with the kids. One mom, who home schools her kids, asked me for copies of any materials I might offer for teaching simple unit conversion and cancellation methods.

I shared with them how, ironically, I had noticed for years, when living 50 miles west of Chicago, the daily “coal train” of 100% hopper cars filled to the brim with Wyoming coal that passed through Geneva near my home, bound for Fisk and Crawford.

“I felt grateful for NOT living in Chicago at the time,” I said sadly. “Just last week, like the proverbial insult to injury, I counted 147 cars in the train when stopped at an intersection in Chicago on my way home."

So it was good to get all that off my chest in front of an appreciative audience, fellow citizens exposed to silent, inconspicuous, and insidious particles of death.

Then it was “back to the mines” filled with final exams to grade.