Mercury Text Font' title='Mercury Text Font' />Classified Ads Want Ads. Classified Wanted. Basic Grammar In Use Third Edition here. Classified ads are free to all current FMRCOA members. You can submit email. How to Use Font Awesome. Font Awesome is. well, awesome Its a great iconbased font thats very commonly pairedup with Bootstrapbased web projects. Add different salts to water, then watch them dissolve and achieve a dynamic equilibrium with solid precipitate. Compare the number of ions in solution for highly. Mercury Calculator. By typing in your weight, selecting a type of fish, and indicating the amount you might eat this week, this mercury calculator produced by. Private Investigator Velcro Patch. EPA Ignored Science When Regulating Power Plant Mercury Emissions. NOTE The following is one of a series of case studies produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists Scientific Integrity Program between 2. Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. The George W. Bush administration has long attempted to avoid issuing new standards to regulate mercury emissions by coal fired power plants based on Maximum Achievable Control Technology MACT, as required by the Clean Air Act. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage and harm reproduction in women and wildlife coal fired power plants are the nations largest source of mercury air emissions, emitting about 4. Instead, senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an Environmental Protection Agency EPA report on childrens health and the environment. As the EPA readied the report for completion in May 2. White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy OSTP began a lengthy review of the document. In February 2. 00. White House, a frustrated EPA official leaked the draft report to the Wall Street Journal, including its finding that eight percent of women between the ages of 1. IQ and motor skills in their offspring. The finding provides strong evidence in direct contradiction to the administrations desired policy of reducing regulation on coal fired power plants and was, many sources suspect, the reason for the lengthy suppression by the White House. On February 2. 4, 2. EPAs report was finally released to the public. Perhaps most troubling is the suspicion that the report may never have surfaced at all had it not been leaked to the press. In a more recent development, the new rules that the EPA finally proposed for regulating power plants mercury emissions were discovered to have no fewer than 1. When challenged, EPA officials contended that the language crept into their proposed rules through the interagency process. But Robert Perciasepe, who headed the EPA air policy office during the Clinton administration, called the wholesale use of industry language inappropriate. As Perciasepe told a Washington Post reporter, The regulations are supposed to be drafted by the staffthe people in the science program and regulatory branches. Drawing upon interviews with no fewer than five current career employees, reporters at the Los Angeles Times exposed in detail the process that led to the proposed mercury regulations. Mastering Microsoft Excel on this page. According to these and other sources, political appointees at the EPA completely bypassed agency professional and scientific staff as well as a federal advisory panel in crafting the proposed new rules. Bruce C. Buckheit, who retired in December 2. EPAs Air Enforcement Division after serving in major federal environmental posts for two decades, says that his enforcement division was not even allowed to review the mercury regulations prior to their release. As Buckheit puts it, the new mercury rules were hatched at the White House the Environmental Protection Agencys experts were simply not consulted at all. In particular, EPA staff members say they pointed out the fact that comparative scientific studies of the effects of the proposed rules were required by EPA procedure. But these EPA staffers contend that they were explicitly told by Jeffrey R. Holmstead, head of EPAs Office of Air and Radiation, that such studies would not be conducted partly because of White House concern. Buckheit and other EPA veterans say they cannot recall another instance when the agencys technical experts were so thoroughly shut out of the process in developing a major regulatory proposal. According to Buckheit, the incident is representative of a degree of politicization of the work of the Environmental Protection Agency by the Bush administration that goes beyond anything I have seen in my career in government. In the wake of these serious allegations, EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt reportedly ordered additional studies of the effects of the proposed mercury rule. Administrator Leavitt also said information related to media reports on the agencys inclusion of industry drafted language in its proposed rule had been forwarded to the EPAs inspector general for possible investigation. In February 2. 00. Mercury Text Font' title='Mercury Text Font' />EPAs own inspector general reported that agency scientists had been pressured to change their scientific findings in order to justify the Administrations industry friendly rules. The report recommended that additional analysis was needed before the rule was finalized. Days later, a Government Accountability Office report found that the EPA had distorted its analysis of the health impacts of mercury on brain development in children and fetuses. Despite these warnings, and to the great dismay of scientists and public health professionals, the EPA issued its final rule on March 1. After the mercury rule was finalized, the Washington Post reported that EPA officials purposefully omitted the results of a Harvard studypaid for by taxpayer dollarswhich showed that the costs of mercury pollution and the benefits of a regulation stronger than the administrations proposal were higher than previously thought. Update On February 8, 2. U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit found that the EPA had illegally violated the Clean Air Acts requirements of significant and timely reductions in toxic air pollution, including mercury, from the nations coal fired power plants. The EPA had been unpersuasive in showing that the levels of toxic emissions from power plants allowed by the rule would not have adverse health and environmental effects. In response to this decision, the EPA will likely develop MACT standards to control mercury emissions. Note This page is an excerpt from the 2. UCS report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking and subsequent updates. Fonts/Mercury%20Display.jpg' alt='Mercury Text Font' title='Mercury Text Font' />E. Pianin, White House, EPA Move to Ease Mercury Rules, Washington Post, December 3, 2. See EPA proposes options for significantly reducing mercury emissions, December 1. See also Mercury MACT Proposed Rule and other source material at www. J. J. Fialka, Mercury Threat to Kids Rising, Unreleased EPA Report Warns, Wall Street Journal, February 2. Americas Children and the Environment Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses, Second Edition, February 2. See E. Pianin, Proposed Mercury Rules Bear Industry Mark, Washington Post, January 3. Ibid. 7. Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller, Mercury Emissions Rule Geared to Benefit Industry, Staffers Say, Los Angeles Times, March 1. EPA staff members, names withheld on request, March 2. Author interview with Bruce Buckheit, March 2. As quoted in Hamburger and Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 1. It is also highly relevant to note that, prior to his appointment by the current administration, Jeffrey R. Holmstead served as an attorney representing industry interests on air pollution issues at Latham Watkins, one of the firms responsible for the exact wording of the text in the EPAs proposed mercury rule. Author interviews with Bruce Buckheit and with two other current EPA staff members, names withheld on request, March 2. IG May Launch Investigation Into Industry Influence Over EPA Mercury Plan, Inside EPA, March 2. Inspector General of the U. S. EPA, Additional Analyses of Mercury Emissions Needed Before EPA Finalizes Rules for Coal Fired Electric Utilities, February 3, 2.