Why is mercury pollution bad?
Mercury can cause learning disabilities, developmental delays, and problems with fine motor coordination in children. Like lead, mercury is a known neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous to fetuses, infants, and young children because their brains are still developing. Levels that produce no symptoms in a mother can lead to permanent and occasionally devastating neurologic deficits in a child (Davidson, et al., 2004). Based on recent government and other studies, up to 8% of pregnant women may have levels above the USEPA guideline of a maximum of 11 ppm (Cernichiari, et al., 1995; Pilgrim, et al., 2000). This translates to more than 300,000 babies exposed to possibly neurotoxic levels of mercury in utero. Although these levels do not result in the severe mental and motor problems seen in infants born to women who ate heavily contaminated fish, such levels have been associated with subtle but measurable neurologic deficits including problems with attention, memory, learning and langu
