I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Over the last 25 years Michigan has made no progress in reducing the amount of mercury in fish because there has been no reduction in mercury fallout from the atmosphere, Capital News Service reports.
Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin.
According to state environmental officials coal fired power plants discharge about 4,000 pounds of mercury per year to the atmosphere, while point source wastewater facilities discharge about 20 pounds per year to surface waters.
Joe Bohr of the state’s fish contaminant monitoring program, told the News Service that we will need to create new regulations for mercury emissions before water quality will improve.
“Even if local sources are reduced, we still have mercury falling out from other sources,” Bohr said. For example, even though fly ash from coal plants is being contained, if it gets reused in cement it will re-emit mercury into the atmosphere.
Maggie Fields of Michigan‘s Office of Pollution Prevention and Compliance said that the most direct source of mercury deposits in water is dental amalgam, which dentists uses for fillings.
“There’s a lot of interconnection with mercury. For example, if dental amalgam isn’t separated from water, it may settle into a sludge on land, which will continue to emit into the atmosphere and so on.”
Under rules finalized last year, Michigan’s 19 coal-fired power plant will be required to install mercury reduction technologies by 2015.
Despite the health risks posed by mercury and other contamination in fish, it seems that more people are fishing to feed their families.
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