Mercury. It's not just in thermometers anymore. This week on Parts Pervilion, we take a look at what the EPA is doing on air pollution and what that has to do with the eightieth element on the periodic table CONSI WI and welcome to Parts Pavilion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host David Schultz. Today we're talking about air pollution and particularly air pollution from power plants. So joining us today to sort through this is Bloomberg Environment's air
pollution reporter. I'm gonna say ed thank you for being here. I'm gonna thank you David for having me. It's a pleasure. Before we get into the air pollution issue, let's talk about mercury itself. I know it's that, you know, liquid metal stuff that's in thermometers, or at least it used to be. But what is it in the context of
air pollution? Where does it come from? So, mercury occurs naturally in the soil, which means it's in the coal which we extract to burn and power plants, right, And the problem for mercury is not when it occurs naturally, but when power plants and other waste incinerators, et cetera burn coal and other fossil fuels, and it gives off
mercury into the air. And when it goes into the air, it falls either onto land or into water and converted into metal mercury, which is a very very potent neurotoxin that then is taken up by fish, freshwater fish and shellfish and other fish. And that's why they say, you know, don't eat too much tuna, right, or don't eat don't eat too much sushi because they might have mercury in it.
I guess that's right, because it magnifies to a huge extent and then we eat it and then it's further bioaccumulated. So it's not it's bad when humans digestive. It sounds like it. It's a neurotoxin. You mentioned it's a neurotoxin. It's especially bad for young kids, babies, and pregnant women. And it comes from the burning of coal. It comes from it sounds it comes from a lot of places, but one of the main places is the burning of
coal coal fired power plants. Yeah, power plants account for forty two percent of mercury in the air, So what have they done so far to cut back on this. You know, I get the sense this is a problem that the power plants and also environmental regulators at the EPA have been working on for a while. Congress back in nineteen nineties directed EPA to set standards nineteen ninety nineteen ninety Clean Air Act amendments. Yes, it took them a while, there were lots of discussion on how to
go about it. Finally, in twenty twelve, to cut a long story short, the Obama administration set standards for power plants. They did that all the electric utilities, most of them, with the exception of maybe a few here and there, have met those standards. So they've installed devices on these power plants to make sure that the you know, the mercury that they're emitting is not too much, or to
sort of try to eliminate all together. So they were they were given standards, so they were installed these different different devices on their power plant so that when you burn mercury to generate power, it captures it before it gets into the smokestacks and goes up into the air. So that's what happened during the Obama administration. Let's sort of fast forward to you, right, now what the EPA
is doing under the Trump administration. It sounds like they recently just took a look at the costs and benefits of having power plants do this, and they found that the benefits weren't actually that high, which is a very different conclusion than the EPA came to under the Obama administration. So what's going on here? Why is this big shift? So the Trump administration has come out and said, we
want to look just at the direct benefits. What are the direct benefits of mercury cutting cutting mercury, and what are the direct costs of controlling mercury? And so they disagreed with the way the Obama administration did it. And because the Obama administration relied mostly on the core benefits or the side benefits of installing controls that would also
reduce airborne particle pollution. So if you're dealing with mercury pollution, you're also dealing with other kinds of pollutance, right because whensoxide or things like that, Right, So when you burn coal, you get a whole bunch of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxides and they go up into the air. So these controls that you have in place, will also will capture mercury, but you have all these other benefits, and the airborne particular pollution that I talk about is actually linked to
aggravated asthma and heart diseases and all of that. Trump administration came out and said, we're going to just do the direct benefits. But here's the kicker. They said, we're going to leave the standards in place, but we're going to take away the basis of setting those standards, which was that you had to do a cost benefit justification. So they're not going to change standards that power plants have to meet, but they're going to essentially negate this
study that underlies those standards. Right, why do you think they're doing that. They're doing this because again, it goes back to the Trump administration's philosophy that we should only be looking at the direct benefits. And that's the philosophical difference between this administration and previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican.
So ultimately, what does this mean for both the people who live near power plants and maybe exposed to the pollution that comes out of that, or the people who own power plants and want to reduce their costs and supply power as efficiently as possible. Are these power plants going to all of a sudden, you know, take down the devices that clean mercury out of their So here's the deal. What EPA did on December twenty eighth was
put forth a proposal. So right now the twenty twelve are in place, they have been met, emissions have been reduced. The problem that they've created is that they have undercut the legal basis for setting those standards. Down there, they can say EPA is making this decision for no reason because look this, you know, reason that you had for setting these mercury standards is it's gone now, so there is no reason. So therefore, judge you should overturn these
these mercury standards. Right. So, do you think that now that Democrats are in control of the House that they may get involved and they may you know, pass laws or add writers onto other laws that say, no, EPA, you have to you can't do what you're what you're doing. Well, they can do it, but as you know, nothing that is done in the House. It also i mean the Senate also has to pass it, and the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, so it has and then you
have the president president who can veto anything. So it's what they can do at this point the House Democrats is they can have oversight hearings and ask EPA take this action. Well, that sounds like a topic for another podcast because we have come to a close on this one. Thank you so much, Amanna. That was really fascinating. Thank you. That was Bloomberg Environments I'm gonna say talking about mercury regulations. For more of her reporting, visit our website at news
dot Bloomberg environment dot com. That website, once again is news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. This episode of Parkspabillion was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs. Our editor is Marissa Horn and our audio engineer is Nicholas and Zelada. The music for Parkspavillion is a message by Jazar. Thanks for listening.