| Public Health and Economic Consequences of Methyl Mercury Toxicity to the Developing Brain Leonardo Trasande,1,2,3,4 Philip J. Landrigan,1,2 and Clyde Schechter5 1Center for Children's Health and the Environment, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, and 2Department of Pediatrics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA; 3Division of General Pediatrics, Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 4Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 5Department of Family Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA Abstract
Methyl mercury is a developmental neurotoxicant. Exposure results principally from consumption by pregnant women of seafood contaminated by mercury from anthropogenic (70%) and natural (30%) sources. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made steady progress in reducing mercury emissions from anthropogenic sources, especially from power plants, which account for 41% of anthropogenic emissions. However, the U.S. EPA recently proposed to slow this progress, citing high costs of pollution abatement. To put into perspective the costs of controlling emissions from American power plants, we have estimated the economic costs of methyl mercury toxicity attributable to mercury from these plants. We used an environmentally attributable fraction model and limited our analysis to the neurodevelopmental impacts--specifically loss of intelligence. Using national blood mercury prevalence data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that between 316,588 and 637,233 children each year have cord blood mercury levels > 5.8 µg/L, a level associated with loss of IQ. The resulting loss of intelligence causes diminished economic productivity that persists over the entire lifetime of these children. This lost productivity is the major cost of methyl mercury toxicity, and it amounts to $8.7 billion annually (range, $2.2-43.8 billion ; all costs are in 2000 US$) . Of this total, $1.3 billion (range, $0.1-6.5 billion) each year is attributable to mercury emissions from American power plants. This significant toll threatens the economic health and security of the United States and should be considered in the debate on mercury pollution controls. Key words: children's health, cognitive development, cord blood, electrical generation facilities, environmentally attributable fraction, fetal exposure, lost economic productivity, mercury, methyl mercury, power plants. Environ Health Perspect 113:590-596 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7743 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 28 February 2005]
Address correspondence to L. Trasande, Center for Children's Health and the Environment, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1057, New York, NY 10029 USA. Telephone: (212) 241-8029. Fax: (212) 996-0407. E-mail: leo.trasande@mssm.edu We are grateful for the helpful advice of P. Grandjean, E. Budtz-Jorgensen, D. Laraque, P. Leigh, and J. Palfrey as well as to D.P. Rice and W. Max for This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences through the Superfund Basic Research Program (PT42ES07384) to Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and by the Jenifer Altman Foundation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Rena Shulsky Foundation. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 10 November 2004 ; accepted 28 February 2005.
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