Junk Science: The Sky Is Falling...

...And It's Laden With Mercury...

Fox News: Junk Science...

"The EPA estimates that, “Human-caused U.S. mercury emissions are estimated to account for roughly 3 percent of the global total, and U.S. coal-fired power plants are estimated to account for only about 1 percent.”
So if we are to worry about mercury, it appears that U.S. power plants are not a terribly worthwhile starting point.
But should we be so worried about mercury emissions to the environment in the first place?
There’s no question that mercury can be toxic to humans and wildlife – but only at sufficiently high doses. A fundamental tenet of modern toxicology is that “the dose makes the poison.” Mere exposure to any level of mercury isn’t necessarily harmful.
We know that extremely high levels of exposure to mercury can be harmful – the mass poisonings that occurred at Minimata Bay (search), Japan in the 1950s and in Iraq in the 1970s provide ample evidence of mercury’s potential toxicity.
But the mercury exposure levels in these instances of poisoning were hundreds to thousands of times greater than current everyday exposures to mercury in the environment and so are of questionable relevance. Despite much research, not a single study credibly links typical exposures to mercury directly to any sort of health effect."