Skeptic scorns mercury risk from coal-fired power plants

By Ian Ith
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Willie Soon, a physicist also known for asserting that global warming is a myth, told his audience at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center that proposals to crack down on mercury emissions in the United States are based on erroneous science and might harm people's health by scaring them away from eating fish.

"No babies are being poisoned," Soon told about four dozen members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators and conservative policy experts meeting this week to share ideas and political strategies. About 2,000 members are in town this week. Interior Secretary Gale Norton is scheduled to speak today.

"I'm a scientist, and I don't approve of the popular headlines on mercury," Soon said. "They're trying to create the notion that mercury can only come from a power plant. Mercury has been here from time immemorial."

Soon contends that less than 1 percent of the world's mercury comes from American power plants, with the vast majority coming from natural sources such as volcanic eruptions, supernovas in space and forest fires.

But Soon has drawn fire recently because his studies on global warming have been partially funded by the petroleum industry. And the group he represented yesterday, the conservative Center for Science and Public Policy, is a wing of the Virginia-based Frontiers of Freedom, which in 2002 received nearly one-third of its $700,000 budget from ExxonMobil, according to The New York Times.

Yesterday, local environmentalists fired back.

"If you pay enough money, you can get anyone to say anything," said Robert Pregulman, executive director of Washington Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit environmental group.

"It is very clear this organization, and this guy in particular, have an ax to grind about any sort of regulation. To say it's not a problem is shortsighted, it's disingenuous and it's flat-out wrong."

Soon, who was joined at the podium by John Wootten, a retired vice president of Peabody Energy of St. Louis, one of the world's largest private coal producers, took direct aim at recent proposals by the Environmental Protection Agency to curb mercury emissions from U.S. power plants by up to 70 percent.

Airborne mercury settles in water, where it turns into a toxic form that is stored in fish and passed on when people eat them, the EPA says.
 
The problem, Soon contended, is that the EPA's proposal doesn't look at the global picture.

Foreign countries, especially China, are pumping out more and more mercury from coal-fired power plants. So even if the U.S. plants completely stopped emitting mercury, it would be trivial to the overall world mercury situation, while financially harming the power industry, Soon said. "We're really talking about something that is very minute compared to what is already out there," Soon said.

Soon said mercury levels in yellowfin tuna, for example, have not increased since 1971, according to one study, suggesting that mercury is a constant in the environment.

Wootten, the coal-industry representative, said mercury emissions have been decreasing from U.S. plants using current technology, and requiring new, unproven and expensive mercury-removal devices would drive up electricity prices and prohibit plants from being built.

Environmental groups counter that even if U.S. emissions provide a small slice of the mercury load, it still amounts to tons of mercury in the air, and "it only takes a teaspoon of mercury to contaminate a lake," Pregulman said. "To say that mercury emissions have no effect on human health is ridiculous."

For its part, the EPA maintains that mercury is proven to have damaging effects on fetuses. And it points out that its proposal would be the first time mercury emissions have been regulated.

"It's a potent neurotoxin," said Bill Dunbar, the EPA's spokesman in Seattle. "It's done damage to people over many centuries. It's certainly the position of the agency that it's a harmful metal."

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com