BP Mercury Dumping
The federal government ordered states more than ten years ago to limit mercury dumping into the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan, my “home lake”.
However, British Petroleum (BP), located in northwest Indiana is still allowed to dump over 2 pounds of mercury into the lake each year. Sure, that amount is small compared with the mercury that falls into the water from air pollution, but mercury builds up in the environment and is so toxic that even tiny drops can threaten fish and people.
Michael Hawthorne, a Chicago Tribune reporter, states that BP and a power plant are the only two remaining companies dumping mercury into Lake Michigan (according to federal reports). In order to comply with federal standards BP needs to reduce its annual discharge to 8/100th of a pound, a pretty large discrepancy.
What is also interesting is that upon review of federal records, the Tribune staff found that the waste water the BP refinery pumps into Lake Michigan includes more than a dozen toxic byproducts of oil refining, including benzene, toluene and suspended solids containing mercury, lead, nickel and vanadium.
The refinery is the top industrial source of lead, nickel and ammonia pollution directly released into the lake, according to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory. It also is one of only two industrial polluters on the lake that dump acetonitrile, a chemical that metabolizes in the environment to cyanide.
If BP were to meet the federal mercury standard for the Great Lakes, it would take the refinery 25 years to put the same amount of the toxic metal into Lake Michigan that it does now in one year.
But, according to Thomas Easterly, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the permitted levels do not have any affect on drinking water, recreational water or animal life.
HA. Have you tested a child with no methylation system before?
Instead of spending the money to stop pollution, BP has decided to increase pollution and hire 80 employees because they are expanding and reporting record profits.
They are not getting my money anymore.
Word Press, Technorati, Autism, methylation, Chicago Tribune, British Petroleum, Mercury Dumping, Lake Michiga, pollution, EPA, Tags
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