The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group has launched a campaign to address the levels of mercury in Wisconsin lakes. The student organization is recruiting students to send postcards and petitions to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and forming groups to push for anti-mercury legislation.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the doses of mercury found in U.S. fish can cause children to be born with significant neurological disorders, including cerebral palsy, delays in walking and talking and reduced neurological test scores. The Wisconsin DNR has issued fish advisories to warn citizens that some types of fish should be consumed no more often than once per month.

This semester, WISPIRG is gathering support for its mercury campaign, which is aimed at encouraging the DNR to approve a set of regulations that would effectively curb mercury emissions 90 percent by 2010.

According to WISPIRG, mercury is found in all of Wisconsin’s 15,057 lakes, and the proposed regulations already have loopholes that could weaken their effectiveness.

“We need to make sure [the set of regulations] has what we want on it,” said Cara Fitzgerald, chair of University of Wisconsin’s WISPIRG chapter and mercury campaign coordinator.

Fitzgerald said Wisconsin utility companies such as coal-burning power plants are the greatest source of mercury pollution, and the proposed regulations allow them to trade emissions credits with other industries that have lower emissions levels, which could allow utilities to avoid meeting required reduction levels.

Vulcan Chemical, according to Fitzgerald, is responsible for 26 percent of Wisconsin’s mercury emissions.

“They are the type of company that would be looking to buy credits, which creates toxic hot spots. Because [Vulcan is] emitting more, the residents feel the effects of mercury to a greater extent,” Fitzgerald said.

According to WISPIRG, the proposed regulations reduce emissions by 90 percent, but not until 15 years after they become effective, and they give industries the opportunity to weaken the regulations when they are evaluated after the first, second and fifth years.

Jon Heinrich, policy analyst for the DNR’s Bureau of Air Management, said the proposed reductions take place every five years. First, industries would be required to lower reductions by 30 percent, then 50 percent after 10 years and 90 percent after 15 years. He said the phases were created because a number of emissions-reducing technologies are still in development and should be given the opportunity to mature.

Heinrich also said the purpose of the periodic evaluations during the 15-year period is to see how effective technology is in the reductions.

“If more could be done, we would require more, or we might ask for less,” Heinrich said.

The concept of emissions credit trading, Heinrich said, is a means for manufacturers who cannot lower emissions at their facilities to find industries that can make reductions the manufacturer cannot.

Larry Bruss, chief of the regional pollutant and mobile source section for the DNR, is part of a mercury-analysis team that is creating a model to be used as a tool to evaluate mercury-control programs across the United States. He said that until recently, monitoring equipment has not been sufficient enough to measure mercury levels and that because it is found in such small quantities, mercury is difficult to understand and analyze.

Bruss said mercury is emitted into the air by utility companies, landfills, crematoriums and other industries and ends up in the fish we eat. He said after mercury is released into the air, it is chemically transformed before it is deposited on the ground or in cloud water. During thunderstorms or rain, mercury runs off into lakes and streams, where bioaccumulation of methylated mercury, the type of mercury that poses the most risks, occurs in fish.

Bruss also said mercury intake can cause significant neurological disorders in developing fetuses, which are most sensitive to mercury’s effects.

“Certainly, if you are a woman of childbearing age, it’s a very significant health-related concern,” Bruss said.