What’s an autistic child worth?
The Environmental Protection Agency has an answer. It’s the income the child won’t be able to earn in his or her lifetime because of autism. This neat calculation was used in setting how severely the EPA will regulate mercury emissions by power plants. Less mercury in the environment leads to fewer children with autism.
Announced two weeks ago, the EPA aims to reduce mercury by 50% over the next 13 years. Using risk assessment, the EPA estimated the health benefit of prevented autism to be $50 million. The cost to industry was estimated to be $750 million.
By the rules of risk assessment that the EPA and other agencies eagerly use, this regulation shouldn’t be put into effect: the cost far outweighs the benefit. By the rules of risk assessment, the burden on industry should be lightened and more mercury allowed into the air. But the power industry, no doubt out of a selfless concern for public health, took a deep breath and signed on to the regulation.
Then last week, the Washington Post revealed that the EPA ignored a study it had commissioned that found the health benefit to be, not $50 million, but $5 billion. 100 times greater and 7 times the cost. By the rules of risk assessment, we should control mercury much more heavily. And so a cat fight has broken out about whose number is right.
The EPA’s method for achieving its goal, whatever it might be, is called cap-and-trade. The EPA sets mercury limits for each company. The cap. Some companies will emit below their limit, some above it. Those that spew more mercury will be able to buy permits from those that spew less. The trade.
Wait a minute. This is a set up.
The EPA and the media are telling us that the controversy is about how much mercury the government is going to permit business to dump into the air and ultimately into our bodies.
Why don’t we call this what it is? The EPA is deciding on the number of autistic children who will be born. And power companies are buying and selling those autistic children.
The set-up is in the system. Risk assessment starts from what industry wants. The burden of proof is on us to show why power companies shouldn’t pour as much mercury as they want into the air.
We need a system that enables us to ask: Which energy technology causes the lowest incidence of autism? That’s what the EPA would ask if it used what’s called alternatives analysis and the precautionary principle instead of risk assessment. Look at Mary O’Brien’s book Making Better Environmental Decisions and the website for the Environmental Science & Health Network www.sehn.org. Let your national, state, and local representatives know you want agencies to use alternatives analysis and the precautionary principle, not risk assessment.
For your individual protection from mercury, look at the website for the Environmental Working Group www.ewg.org.
