| Dear Omss, Mercury can have a devastating effect on wildlife. From endangered salmon to the bald eagles that eat them, mercury contamination can have widespread and dangerous impacts on our environment. That's why Defenders of Wildlife is joining with our friends at CREDO Action to help keep this poison out of our air and water... and away from our wildlife. Thank you, Rodger Schlickeisen |
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| Tell the EPA: Stop unlimited mercury pollution from power plants.
Dear Friend, It only takes a little mercury to cause a lot of brain damage and death. But every year, coal-fired power plants alone pump nearly 50 tons of this potent neurotoxin into our air. Mercury exposure is so widespread in this country that as many as 1 in 6 women of childbearing age has mercury levels in her blood high enough to put a baby at risk of mercury poisoning,1 Incredibly, mercury from power plants has been totally unregulated by the Clean Air Act, until now. The EPA has announced a significant rule to reduce emissions of mercury, arsenic, lead, dioxins, acid gas, and six dozen other toxic chemicals that power plants are now able to freely dump into our air. It's the most important clean air rule since the Clean Air Act was updated in 1990 -- and the EPA is under tremendous pressure by the coal industry and extremists in Congress to weaken it. Tell the EPA: Stop unlimited toxic mercury pollution from power plants. Submit a public comment now. For decades, Big Coal and electric utilities have successfully fought requirements to reduce their toxic air pollution. They've kept releasing mercury into the air, where it finds its way into the vast majority of our lakes and waterways, into our fish, and then into our bodies, where the poison accumulates, causing deadly disease and impairing fundamental brain functions like the ability to walk, talk, read, write and learn. Now we have a chance to change that. According to the EPA, reduced emissions from this new air toxics rule will save as many as 17,000 American lives every year by 2015, and will prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma. Tell the EPA: Stop unlimited toxic mercury pollution from power plants. Submit a public comment now. The health benefits of this rule will provide tremendous monetary benefits of between $60 billion to $140 billion annually, at a substantially lower cost of less than $11 billion for the polluters.2 With no sense of irony, polluters claim this is too expensive a cost for them to bear -- as they reap billions of dollars in profit and heap substantially higher health costs onto the public. But the cost of the new regulations is a bargain, and the requirements are very reasonable: power plants have four years to install or upgrade to technology that already exists and is in use at many power plants nationwide. As we have seen with the repeated attacks on the Clean Air Act's ability to regulate climate pollution, industry efforts to weaken this air toxins rule will be fierce, and these powerful utilities have many friends in the Congress who are more than happy to do this dirty work. We need to display a massive show of support to encourage the EPA to keep this landmark rule as strong as possible. Please add your voice now. Tell the EPA: Stop unlimited toxic mercury pollution from power plants. Submit a public comment now. Thank you for fighting for clean air. Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager 1. "Protect our kids from toxic mercury," CNN, March 17th, 2011
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| © Copyright 2011, Defenders of Wildlife This message was sent to omsstravel.33333@blogger.com. Defenders of Wildlife is a national, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the protection of all native wild animals and plants in their natural communities. Defenders of Wildlife can be contacted at: |
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