You don’t have to be a scientist to work out that breathing in mercury and other toxic air pollutants is bad for your health—and bad for the planet. That being said, scientists would resoundingly agree.
Some mercury does naturally exist in the earth’s crust. But human activities, including the extraction and burning of dirty fossil fuels, have led to widespread mercury pollution in the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the food that we eat. And the chief culprit, contributing the vast majority of mercury and other toxic air pollution, are coal-fired power plants, which burn and release the mercury found in fossil fuels into the atmosphere.
Fortunately, about a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started regulating how much mercury and other hazardous air toxics those facilities can put into the air by setting Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). Trump’s EPA undid these life-saving rules, and now President Biden’s EPA just reinstated and somewhat strengthened the prior rules to further reduce mercury and heavy metals, especially at power plants that burn the dirtiest lignite coal. There is still more to do. But more on that later.