The Mercury Mess

Only a few months ago, mercury pollution was thought to be a problem confined mainly to the Great Lakes region. It has since turned up in 33 states. Because millions of pounds of the lethal metal have been dumped into the nation's waterways in the past 20 years, tainting untold numbers of fish, officials in ten states have closed down some commercial fisheries. Public Health workers in 16 states have warned residents against eating fish or fowl from suspect waterways. At least one family, the Hucklebys of Alamogordo, N. Mex., has been seriously poisoned after eating food contaminated with mercury.

The problem is compounded by widespread ignorance about the hazards of mercury. Until Norwegian Chemist Norvald Fimreite found traces of mercury in fish taken from Lake St. Clair last spring, almost no one suspected that it could be one of the most dangerous water pollutants. Even some scientists assumed that mercury would sink to the bottom of lakes and rivers, pass harmlessly through fish, or kill a few fish without harming other organisms. Until this year, mercury was not listed as one of the substances to be tested for by the Federal Water Quality Administration, the Interior Department agency charged with policing the nation's water.

Agency officials now realize that mercury changes its potency in water; through a complex chemical reaction, the relatively harmless inorganic form is transformed into deadly methyl mercury. Minute amounts are picked up by microorganisms, which are then eaten by small fish, which in turn are eaten by large predatory fish like pike and pickerel. When humans eat these fish, they can receive dosages of methyl mercury massive enough to cause blindness, brain damage, and even death.

Worst Offenders. Once the hazard was recognized, the Federal Water Quality Administration moved with remarkable speed. Within the past year, the agency has clamped down on polluting industries and has asked the Justice Department to prosecute ten companies accused of polluting the waters of seven states. Investigators found that the worst offenders were paper companies that either used mercury to prevent the formation of slime in the production of paper, or chemical companies using mercury cells to separate chlorine from brine solutions.

In some cases, investigators ordered offending plants to shut down until they could install satisfactory pollution controls. In all cases, polluters were prodded into quick action. Last week Interior Department officials announced that the amount of mercury being dumped into U.S. waterways has been reduced by 86%.

Still, the agency is faced with the problem of effectively policing 134,000 square miles of inland waterways with just 100 men. Their job may be impossible. For one thing, mercury is still entering U.S. waters on a dangerous scale. For another, the mercury that is already in the water will probably remain there for 50 to 100 years, and will continue to be methylized and consumed by fish. Even if mercury could somehow be scooped up, some ecologists fear that the scooping would disturb aquatic habitats more than the mercury itself. The use of chemical detergents to "clean" lakes or rivers is frowned upon for much the same reason.

Task Force. Despite the problems, scientists are not about to give up. Ecologist Barry Commoner, working with a group called Scientists' Institute for Public Information, has helped launch a "task force on mercury pollution." That force is made up of 25 experts who will list the best methods for dealing with mercury pollution and then distribute the list to scientists around the country, as well as to Government agencies.

Unfortunately, mercury is only one of a galaxy of new-found environmental hazards. A Senate subcommittee was recently warned by Dr. Henry Schroeder of the Dartmouth Medical School that such substances as lead, cadmium and nickel carbonyl are "much more insidious" in their effect than pesticides or other polluters of air and water. It is possible, the Senators were told, that minute amounts of cadmium in humans can cause high blood pressure, while trace amounts of nickel carbonyl can cause lung cancer.

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