Airborne mercury? Trump and his EPA say more is better

Anyone dumping toxic materials is a menace who should be arrested.

Which is what got this illegal tire-dumper in trouble, and rightly so.

Arrests aside, people know they're not allowed to throw batteries and electronic devices away because the toxic metals they contain could end up in the food and water supply.

But releasing additional toxic materials into the public domain is exactly what Trump's mission-busting and pollution-boosting US EPA will enable by officially allowing coal-fired power plants 

to release more airborne mercury and other heavy metals into the nation's lakes, rivers and streams - - waters irrigate farm produce, sustain fish which end up on dinner tables nationwide and move from the kitchen tap to baby's bottles to her veins, arteries and tissues :

The Trump administration is expected to roll back an Obama-era regulation to limit dangerous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury from coal-fired power plants, according to two people familiar with the plans. 

With a series of new rules expected in November, the Environmental Protection Agency will move to weaken the 2015 regulation by relaxing some of the requirements on power generators and also exempting a significant number of power plants from even those requirements.

I have been tracking here this intentionally-damaging assault on water, the environmental and public health, and call attention to the known Wisconsin data:

Earlier [in 2018], I posted information which is still on a US EPA website about the extent of waterway impairment in Wisconsin as of 2016, including impairment caused by mercury, and I noted this at the time.

I was struck by the persistent presence of mercury and the growth of phosphorous contamination in the few categories I pulled out - - the latter not surprising because under Walker the state relaxed the time frame in which phosphorous discharges were to be addressed.

Here are some of the key data about known mercury contamination in Wisconsin - - and since we know what goes out of smokestacks comes down - - so you have to ask yourself in light of Trump's support for making it more likely that these and other numbers nationally will go up: Isn't this enough?

Cause of Impairment Group Name	Number of Causes of Impairment Reported
Mercury	282

Miles of Impairment, Rivers and streams, Mercury.888.2

Great Lakes Shorelines, miles, 259.4.

Lakes, reservoirs and ponds acres, 284,275.

Bays and estuaries, Square miles, 6,067.
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