Mercury contamination standard eased

Web posted April 21, 1999

By H. Josef Herbert
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- A federal health agency relaxed its standard Monday on when mercury contamination, especially from eating fish, poses a threat to human health, prompting complaints from some members of Congress and environmentalists.

The revised health standard issued by an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allows three times as much mercury contamination as the standard currently used by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the ``dramatic relaxation'' of the standard by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ``will only cause more confusion'' about how much mercury consumption poses a danger to health.

The health impact of low levels of mercury contamination has been widely disputed. Congress last year barred further regulation of mercury until the National Academy of Sciences completes a study of the health effects next year.

But environmentalists as well as some state officials said the easing of the standard by the federal health agency will send the wrong message to the public -- as well as to industry -- that mercury contamination is not an urgent problem.

The health agency said that based on the latest studies people can consume as much as 0.3 micrograms of mercury per kilogram of their body weight without health risks. Its previous standard and the standard used by the EPA has been 0.1 microgram.

The standard, formally known as the ``minimal risk level,'' is often used by state health officials to calculate maximum fish consumption and, in turn, fishing advisories.

The ATSDR, as the agency is known, said the revised standard, or toxicity profile, should not be used by states and other agencies to change existing fish advisories nor cause the federal Food and Drug Administration to change its consumption advisories of commercial fish.

But critics said they were concerned that easing of the standard will be used by the fishing industry to argue against fish advisories and by electric utilities to argue against regulation of mercury emissions from power plants.

The health agency ``is doing the downfield blocking on the mercury issue for special interest groups,'' complained Michael Bender, director of the Mercury Policy Project, based in Montpelier, Vt., an advocacy group active in lobbying for tighter controls on mercury emissions.

Kathy Skipper, a spokeswoman for the ATSDR, said the change in the agency's minimum toxicity standard ``reflects the latest studies'' on mercury contamination and ``adds to the body of knowledge.'' She said it may be further revised once the National Academy of Sciences findings come out next year.

But environmentalists argued that the health agency has relied too heavily on a disputed study of mercury exposure to pregnant women in the Seychelles Islands that minimized the health impact, while given less importance to another study in the Faroe Islands off Scotland that had opposite findings.

``They (the ATSDR) have an agenda that they only want to push the Seychelles study,'' argued Bender.