RFK, Jr. Silent as EPA Weakens Mercury Air pollution Guidelines

CLIMATEWIRE | The final time President Donald Trump tried to roll again a mercury regulation, he confronted a high-profile opponent: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy railed towards EPA at an August 2017 public listening to for going together with the Trump administration’s calls for to repeal wastewater limits. He warned that permitting extra energy plant air pollution to enter waterways would poison individuals by mercury-contaminated fish — an issue he skilled personally after a interval of consuming tuna.

“It’s actually troublesome for these of us who will undergo out of your irresponsibility,” Kennedy stated on the time. “The regulation says the waterways of this nation, the fisheries of this nation, belong to the individuals.”

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Eight years later, Kennedy has been silent because the Trump administration is once more rolling again those self same mercury rules, together with not less than a dozen different air pollution controls introduced final week in what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has known as the company’s “greatest deregulatory motion in U.S. historical past.”

Earlier than Kennedy was confirmed in January to guide the Division of Well being and Human Providers, he ran a presidential marketing campaign on the promise to “make America wholesome once more,” partially by getting poisonous chemical compounds out of the nation’s meals.

Then, throughout his affirmation listening to two months in the past, Kennedy touted his expertise with combating mercury air pollution as an environmental legal professional and because the founding father of Waterkeeper, an environmental group. “The identical chemical compounds that kill fish make individuals sick,” Kennedy stated on the January listening to.

Kennedy did not reply to requests for remark or questions on whether or not he nonetheless believes mercury is a public well being menace.

“If he actually does care in regards to the points he used to care about when he was working on the Waterkeeper, you’ll assume he would say one thing,” stated Abel Russ, director of the Environmental Integrity Undertaking’s Middle for Utilized Environmental Science. “EPA is doing lots of issues which are an anathema to his acknowledged life’s mission.”

If EPA fulfills Zeldin’s promise to roll again not less than a dozen air pollution controls, extra individuals might be uncovered to particulate matter, smog and nitrogen oxides — pollution that may result in extreme well being penalties resembling lowered IQ, bronchial asthma, elevated coronary heart assaults and untimely deaths, in response to EPA’s personal analyses.

Among the many threatened guidelines are two mercury discount requirements. One limits the quantity of mercury that is launched into the air and is predicted to scale back emissions of the potent neurotoxin by greater than 16 p.c by 2028. The opposite reduces mercury that is launched into rivers and streams, and would assist infants keep away from dropping an estimated 1,377 IQ factors yearly.

It isn’t publicly recognized whether or not Kennedy weighed in on EPA’s choices. Earlier than the election, Trump stated he would let Kennedy “make our nation so wholesome” however that Kennedy “can’t contact” fossil fuels like oil and gasoline.

“We’re not going to let him become involved,” Trump stated in October.

Since then, Trump created a Make America Wholesome Fee with the aim of “making certain United States meals is the healthiest … on the earth” and addressing potential contributing causes of childhood continual illness, “together with the American eating regimen, absorption of poisonous materials … environmental elements [and] authorities insurance policies.”

The fee, on which Kennedy and Zeldin sit, met for the primary time final Tuesday, in the future earlier than EPA’s rollbacks had been introduced. The assembly was held behind closed doorways and neither EPA or HHS responded to questions on whether or not Kennedy and Zeldin had mentioned rolling again the foundations or how the rollbacks would impression Individuals’ well being.

EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou stated in an announcement, “Not will the EPA view the targets of defending our surroundings and rising our financial system as binary decisions.”

She didn’t reply to a query about what particular steps EPA would take to enhance American’s well being, saying solely that the company “appears ahead to intently collaborating on methods to satisfy President Trump’s purpose of eradicating toxins from the atmosphere and our meals provide and holding our youngsters wholesome and robust.”

‘Fish consumption is harmful now’

Mercury is a neurotoxin that may hurt the mind and nervous system, resulting in decrease IQ and behavioral issues. It primarily enters rivers and lakes by wastewater from energy vegetation and factories, or in air emissions that choose waterways.

As soon as within the water, micro organism convert it to a extra poisonous kind known as methylmercury that’s simply taken up by fish and different aquatic organisms. The mercury stays of their our bodies for lengthy durations of time, and could be transferred from prey to predator when different fish or individuals eat contaminated animals.

Mercury can hurt anybody’s cognition, however publicity is particularly harmful for infants and toddlers. Pregnant individuals are inspired to keep away from consuming fish like tuna and swordfish to guard their fetuses’ growing nervous techniques.

Kennedy himself has skilled mercury poisoning from fish consumption.

He has stated he found “harmful ranges of mercury” in his blood after having “phrase retrieval issues and reminiscence issues that I by no means had earlier than” within the early 2000s.

“Our fish consumption is harmful now,” he stated in 2017. “In my opinion, we live in a science-fiction nightmare at this level on this nation.”

Kennedy has not minced phrases when blaming the coal business for poisoning the nation’s fish.

After EPA wrote its first-ever limits on mercury air emissions in 2012, Kennedy wrote an op-ed touting the well being advantages of the rule, which was projected to forestall 4,000 to 11,000 untimely deaths. He argued that it could cease “coal barons and mining magnates … benefiting from poisoning the remainder of us.”

‘Anti-fish’

As we speak, Kennedy is probably higher recognized for spreading falsehoods about vaccines than he’s for environmental advocacy. However his issues about vaccines had been, not less than initially, rooted in fears about mercury’s neurotoxic results. In 2005, Kennedy wrote an article in Rolling Stone journal to say {that a} mercury-based preservative in vaccines was inflicting autism in wholesome kids — a hyperlink that has been debunked in a number of research. The journal article was later retracted.

The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention says there’s “no proof of hurt” by the preservative, thimerosal, that was in some vaccines. (Thimerosal was faraway from U.S. childhood vaccines in 2001 underneath an settlement involving producers, federal companies and the American Academy of Pediatrics, 4 years earlier than Kennedy’s article was printed.)

In January, Kennedy drew a connection between vaccines and fish throughout his affirmation listening to. He advised senators who had expressed concern about his promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories that it was unfair to name him an anti-vaxer as a result of, “I labored for years to scale back mercury and poisonous chemical compounds in fish, and no one known as me anti-fish.”

Consuming contaminated seafood continues to be the commonest pathway for mercury publicity. Surveillance testing by the Meals and Drug Administration that has examined the presence of chemical compounds in meals at grocery shops confirmed that fish include greater ranges of mercury than different meals.

Canned tuna had a mean focus of 230 components per billion of mercury in checks performed from 2018 to 2020. Cod had 87 components per billion and salmon had 21 components per billion. By comparability, store-bought cornbread had a mean mercury focus of three.3 components per billion, the very best stage present in a meals that was not fish.

Kennedy has used his Cupboard place as well being secretary to put food-additive corporations on discover about including dyes and chemical compounds in meals.

However there’s a restrict to what HHS can do to restrict mercury’s presence in fish — as a result of environmental contamination is the primary supply of the neurotoxin. Although HHS gives recommendation to customers on which species of fish would prone to have decrease mercury content material, truly stopping contamination stems from EPA’s air pollution guidelines.

That these guidelines are a goal of Trump’s rollbacks present the bounds of Kennedy’s mission, stated John Walke, director of the Pure Sources Protection Council’s Federal Clear Air Program.

“The EPA motion to extend poisonous mercury air pollution speaks far louder than the ‘make America wholesome once more’ phrases about mercury’s risks,” he stated. “No matter discuss — and it is simply discuss — was had from the MAHA aspect of this administration about mercury poisoning clearly has no impression on actions at EPA.”