County mercury levels 3rd highest in Pa.
By Ad Crable
Published Jun 23, 2006 13:32
A state-run monitoring station near Millersville has measured mercury levels here among the highest in the state.
Of eight sampling sites around the state, the average level of mercury here over the last two years was the third highest.
In an interview this week, state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty cautioned that the agency likes to have multiple years of data before drawing conclusions, as just two years of mercury readings can be influenced by the vagaries of weather.
But high levels of mercury found in fish in local waterways is evidence that vaporized mercury is falling into the soil and waters here.
Because of mercury buildups, anglers are advised against eating more than two meals a month of rock bass caught in the Conestoga River from the Millersville area down to the river’s mouth at Safe Harbor.
Similarly, walleye caught from the Susquehanna in the Conewago Falls area off Conoy Township should not be eaten more than twice a month.
Fish captured by the state at those two locations were ground up and their tissue measured for mercury.
They were found with mercury at more than twice the level the state begins recommending restricted meals.
Since 2001, the state, in fact, has sought to limit the eating of all fish caught in Pennsylvania waters because of mercury, PCBs and other long-lasting contaminants.
Consumption warnings due to mercury also extend above the water.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission warns hunters against eating mergansers, a duck that dives for fish.
DEP officials warn that areas most likely to get the highest buildups of mercury contamination are those within 90 miles downwind of power plants.
Deposits accumulate in the water, building up in fish, and in the soil, where it is taken up by grains, milk and particularly in the livers of cows, DEP says.
Just upwind from Lancaster County, on the shoreline of the Susquehanna in York County, is PPL’s Brunner Island coal-fired power plant.
Brunner Island was the 110th-largest source of mercury in the country in 2003, and eighth-largest source in Pennsylvania, according to the federal Toxic Release Inventory.
The plant released 272 pounds of mercury that year.
The facility is adjacent to the area of the Susquehanna where high levels of mercury have been found in walleye fish.
Last year, PPL announced it was installing coal “scrubbers” to comply with new air-pollution controls on sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. The scrubbers, to be working in 2008 or 2009, also will reduce mercury emissions, the company said.
Until recent years, the major sources of mercury emissions in the U.S. were hospital and trash incinerators.
Municipal-waste incinerators released mercury from burning batteries, fluorescent lightbulbs, old thermometers and other mercury-containing waste.
Lancaster County’s trash-to-steam incinerator in Conoy Township along the Susquehanna, just downstream of Brunner Island, emitted an estimated 200 pounds of mercury in 1998, according to the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority.
But federal controls mandated for all municipal and medical-waste incinerators resulted in $2.5 million worth of mercury-cleansing equipment at the county incinerator that year.
In 2004, mercury emissions had fallen to 4.5 pounds, a 98-percent reduction.
In a voluntary move to keep mercury out of the trash before it gets to the incinerator, the authority now recycles old thermometers, batteries and fluorescent bulbs at its drive-through Household Hazardous Waste facility on Harrisburg Pike.
“We do as good a job at controlling mercury emissions as anybody in the country,” says James Warner, the authority’s executive director.
Other local sources of mercury emissions listed by the state include Armstrong’s ceiling plant in Marietta. In 2002, the plant emitted 2 pounds of mercury.
Armstrong’s floor plant in Lancaster also released about 2 pounds that year, but the plant has since closed.
Earlier this year, the University of North Carolina-Asheville announced the results of a nationwide study of mercury levels found in the hair of 6,600 women of childbearing age — developmental damage to fetuses is the biggest concern of mercury poisoning.
One in five women was found to have mercury levels exceeding what the federal government considers safe.
Of six women tested in Lancaster County, two had mercury levels in their hair above the safe level.
