By: Karin Stein, Iowa State Coordinator, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: May 9, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2018-0794
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Good afternoon. My name is Karin Stein. I am Iowa organizer for Moms Clean Air Force and its EcoMadres program. We are a national organization of over a million and a half moms, dads, and other caretakers united against air pollution. We fight for climate safety and environmental justice.
I strongly support EPA’s proposal to strengthen the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and I ask that EPA finalize these standards as quickly as possible.
Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that harms the developing brains of babies and children. Iowa is not on people’s minds when it comes to mercury pollution, but mercury is still a problem in several locations here. Iowa has nine coal plants in operation, all of which pump dangerous mercury into the air, along with other toxic heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, and lead. In 2021, the Iowa Environmental Council calculated the total mercury emission from Iowa coal plants to have been 75 pounds, which is alarming, considering how mercury concentrates as methylmercury in the fatty tissue of fish.
Utilities in Iowa enjoy a monopoly over their service territory, which means individual Iowans and businesses have no choice in their utility provider. With a captive market, coal plants in Iowa have no incentive to change their production practices, and our only hope for improving them is to ask EPA to hold them to the safest standards possible, all the while knowing that there is no such thing as safe mercury levels.
The website of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources lists 26 fish consumption advisories for various Iowa lakes and rivers. Of those 26 advisories, 24 (92%) are for mercury in fish, and 2 are for PCBs. The advisories state that no more than 1 portion of fish from these locations should be eaten per week.
I mapped out where the fish advisories in our state are concentrated. Lake advisories are concentrated in the southern and southeastern counties of our state, where our most polluting industries, including two large coal plants, are concentrated.
Fish advisories for rivers are concentrated in northeastern Iowa,
downstream from Minnesota coal plants, and also downstream from unlined coal ash storage ponds of retired coal plants within Iowa.
I live on the edge of a state park, 200 feet from a lake. Our lake is not on a mercury advisory list, but I know it has other contamination problems, and I observe who fishes here. On weekends I see many young families, most of them multigenerational Latino and Asian families for whom spending time fishing with the whole family is a cultural tradition. On my walks, I stop to chat with them. I have found time and again that they never question the safety of the fish they eat, because I ask. They laugh and say, “Oh, it’ll be ok, don’t worry.”
Because many people—perhaps the majority—don’t know to question the safety of the fish they eat and likely don’t think to check for fish advisories, it is essential that EPA improve Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. In any case, fish advisories are difficult to find on the internet, and the ones that are available, are not kept up in real time. Fish advisories can also be contradictory and confusing, because states vary in how they interpret health threats from the same data. If there are public warning signs at all, they are typically in English, and many of the areas that have fish advisories in southeast Iowa, also have large Latino populations.
In the name of all families with young children and pregnant moms, regardless of their cultural background and regardless of where they live in this country, please finalize stronger mercury and air toxics protections as soon as possible.
Thank you.