The Centers for Disease Control is poised to issue a draft report that claims that mercury poses a much smaller health threat to the general population than EPA will assert in a controversial report that the agency hopes to release by the end of the year.
EPA officials say that they were unaware of the CDC report until late last month and admit that they are concerned about its release. However, one EPA official suggests that there appear to be some significant flaws in the CDC report which hopefully can be corrected before it is finalized.
EPA has been fighting an uphill battle for several years to release a report which includes a comprehensive inventory of mercury emissions and information regarding the exposures and health effects that stem from mercury emissions. While the report was required to be completed in 1994 under the Clean Air Act, it has not yet been finalized. EPA was on the cusp of releasing the study at least twice, but in each instance, other federal agencies moved to undercut the agency's effort. In each case, these agencies claimed that EPA's report was alarmist and could unnecessarily lead people to believe that fish consumption posed a significant health threat.
In 1996, EPA agreed to delay the report's issuance until a critical new study on mercury was evaluated by the agency's Science Advisory Board. This study, which was premised on data collected in the Seychelles Islands, was deemed important since there have been relatively few studies on mercury exposure. For instance, EPA's mercury report is largely based on a 25 year old study that was conducted in Iraq. The SAB, however, disagreed, and concluded earlier this year that there were a number of problems linked to the Seychelles study. With this established, the board cleared the way for EPA to finalize its study without incorporating the Seychelles Islands study's conclusions.
EPA had intended to finalize its report by the end of the year, but this commitment may now be threatened by the release of a draft mercury profile that the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry is set to release. According to EPA sources, the ATSDR profile establishes a reference dose for mercury that is five times less stringent than the level that EPA has included in its report. Thus, ATSDR believes that the general population can be safely exposed to levels of mercury that would be deemed threatening by EPA. ATSDR's proposal however, reportedly finds that the lowest observed level of mercury related effects occur at approximately the same level that is identified in EPA's report.
Industry and EPA sources say the implications of this report may have significant impacts on EPA's regulatory agenda since it could call into question any agency action that would substantially reduce mercury emissions. Utility industry sources are particularly pleased by the development since EPA has consistently held out the possibility of conducting a rulemaking to crack down on the industry's mercury emissions. Such a rulemaking, according to the industry, could cost billions of dollars, and officials have previously warned that such actions could not be justified by health data. This study could be "our get out of jail card," says one industry source, noting that EPA may have a difficult time moving forward a program if it is not supported by one of the nation's leading authorities on health.
EPA sources acknowledge that this is a setback, but some are holding out hope that ATSDR's report has a long way to go before it is finalized. An agency official explains that there appear to be a number of problems associated with the ATSDR report, and in particular, its reliance on the Seychelles study. This source points out that the SAB highlighted a number of concerns with this study and warned that researchers should be careful before using the data to draw broad conclusions about threats to an entire population, especially one as diverse as the U.S. For instance, the study was conducted on a relatively narrow slice of the population, and one agency source believes that it is does not present a clear picture of how other segments of the population are affected.
EPA is now asking that the ATSDR report be subjected to an intense inter-agency review before it is finalized. This request will probably not stop the proposal from being issue since CDC's document has reportedly already been signed and sent to the Federal Register for publication.
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