The cement plant on the Ichetucknee will emit 129 pounds of mercury according to Anderson Columbia.
It also will emit 60 pounds of lead
.6 pounds of beryllium
and .002 pounds of dioxin.Mercury is a toxic metal that is being increasingly recognized as a threat to the health
of numerous wildlife species and tens of thousands of women and children around
the country. The most significant sources of the metal in the U.S. environment
include coal fired power plants and incinerators emitting mercury to the air. After
finding its way into water bodies, mercury can build up in the food chain, leading to
high concentrations in fish that can then expose certain wildlife and people to the
metal. The fact that 40 state health departments have issued fish consumption
advisories warning certain populations to limit the amount of fish they eat due to
mercury exposure indicates the severity of the problem.In fish, laboratory studies have shown that moderate to high mercury levels can
result in impaired sperm generation, growth reduction or inhibition, reduced hatching
success, and embryo or larval mortality. In addition, high levels of mercury in water
have been shown to cause mortality to the embryo or larvae of frogs. In laboratory
studies on wildlife, effects from methyl mercury exposure include reduced hatching
success and duckling survival in mallard ducks, and reduced hatch ability and high
embryo and duckling mortality in American black ducks. In addition, field studies
have found reduced hatching success in common loons and common terns in
mercury contaminated waters in northwestern Ontario and other regions. In
addition, mercury related reproductive impairments have been seen in common
loons nesting in lakes in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada. Common loons
frequently nest on low-pH, low alkalinity lakes that have higher mercury levels.
Many lakes in the northern Great Lakes region and New England fall in this
category.While not all of the emitted mercury from a given industrial facility will wind up in a
nearby water body, these releases of mercury can be put into perspective by
considering the very small amount of mercury necessary to contaminate a given lake.
A medium sized coal fired power plant, which typically has little mercury removing
technology, can emit in the neighborhood of 50 pounds of mercury per year. By
contrast, 5,000 walleye in the two- to three pound size class contaminated to a level
of 0.5 ppm (a level sufficient to trigger fish consumption advisories) would contain a
total of less than one tenth of an ounce of mercury.