Benefits associated with the reduction of mercury emissions far outweigh industry cost

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/hjap-baw021616.php

Public Release: 16-Feb-2016
Benefits associated with the reduction of mercury emissions far outweigh industry cost
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

How should cost factor into the protection of human health and the environment? That was the central question in a Supreme Court case last summer that pitted the coal industry and 20 U.S. states against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The court ruled that the EPA did not properly take into account what it would cost power plants to comply with new regulations to reduce the emission of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin [it damages the nervous system, including the brain]. Now the EPA has until the self-imposed deadline of April 16 to come up with a cost consideration plan.

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After a review of the recent scientific literature, the authors concluded that the benefits associated with the reduction of mercury emissions far outweigh the cost to industry.

Three key points from their comments, published in Environmental Science and Technology, are:

The benefits of implementing of the Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS) are easily in the tens of billions.

In its initial cost-benefit analysis, the EPA estimated the direct benefits of mercury reduction to be $4 to $6 million. But that study is based on an extremely small subset of the population: children of freshwater recreational anglers in the U.S. The EPA chose this approach because these benefits of the regulation could be monetized using methods that everyone could agree on.

But if you consider all of the benefits of reducing coal-fired power plant mercury emissions, the benefits are easily orders of magnitude greater than those quantified by EPA. For example, one recent study found that the cumulative benefits associated with implementation of MATS exceeded $43 billion. Other work has estimated an annual benefit of $860 million associated with a 10 percent reduction in methylmercury exposure in the U.S. population.

Most benefits to human health and wildlife haven't even been monetized.

Many of these benefits are associated with cardiovascular [heart and blood vessel] health. The EPA did not quantify cardiovascular effects during the agency's initial assessment due to what can be described as "scientific uncertainty". However, an independent panel of experts sponsored by EPA in 2011 concluded that methylmercury has a substantial impact on cardiovascular health and should be incorporated into benefits assessments.

Methylmercury exposure has also been linked to poor endocrine function, risk of diabetes, and compromised immune health -- none of which have been monetized yet. Nor have the impacts of methylmercury exposure on fish and wildlife been quantified and emerging evidence suggests these effects are much more severe than previously realized.

The EPA underestimated the benefits of mercury reduction from coal-fired power plants.

Recent research, in part led by Sunderland, has shown that local and regional efforts to reduce mercury emissions are doing better than expected in reducing human and wildlife exposure to methylmercury. This new science was not available to EPA in 2012 when the original analyses of benefits of mercury reduction were being assessed.

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