The Duluth News Tribune reports the state of Minnesota is withdrawing from a research project regarding mercury pollution in the St. Louis River, even though much of the river’s fish are inedible to women and children, and despite the fact that 1 out of 10 North Shore infants have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.
The article states that sources of mercury in the environment are well known. They include power plants, taconite plants and sulfate pollution (like the pollution from sulfide mining).
Officials from the MPCA said the state first needs more research on how mercury behaves in nature, but later in the article the proposed study is said to have included new research on how mercury behaves in the environment. Huh? It seems this research would be especially timely due to proposed copper-sulfide mining in Northern Minnesota.
