He also likes mercury

Sunday I wrote a brief post questioning Andrew Wheeler's, the head of the EPA, liking of hamburgers. It looks as though he also likes mercury. which is a quite dangerous pollutant. Most of our mercury comes from the smokestacks of electric companies using coal. In 2012, the EPA took steps to lower the production of mercury by causing power plants to use 'scrubbers' to remove mercury from the emissions before they leave the smokestack. Since the rule went into effect, electric companies have cut mercury emissions by nearly 90 percent, according to the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group.

Mr. Wheeler wants to change this rule by rewriting the way costs and benefits are evaluated. Surprisingly, the nation’s electric utility industry is siding with the EPA since the industry found that implementation cost far less than they had anticipated. Further, since the rule was finalized, the science documenting the severe health impacts of mercury has become even stronger. New studies show that the quantified benefits of reducing mercury are now in the billions of dollars; a study published in the journal Environmental Health in 2017 estimated that the societal costs associated with the neurocognitive deficits from methylmercury exposure in the United States that year was $4.8 billion.