Mercury pollution is a global problem with local consequences: Emissions from coal-fired power plants and other sources travel around the world through the atmosphere, eventually settling in oceans and waterways, where the pollutant gradually accumulates in fish. Consumption of mercury-contaminated seafood leads to increased risk for cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairments.
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In a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers report that global action on reducing mercury emissions will lead to twice the economic benefits for the U.S., compared with domestic action, by 2050....[The full paper is available free of charge at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1514395113.full.pdf.
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In a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers report that global action on reducing mercury emissions will lead to twice the economic benefits for the U.S., compared with domestic action, by 2050....[The full paper is available free of charge at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1514395113.full.pdf.
The researchers calculated the projected U.S. economic benefits from the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty adopted in 2013 to reduce mercury emissions worldwide, compared with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), a national regulation set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce mercury pollution from the country’s coal-fired power plants.
Overall, while both policies are projected to lead to roughly the same amount of reductions in mercury deposited on U.S. soil compared to a no-policy case, Americans’ consumption of mercury by 2050 are estimated to be 91 percent lower under the global treaty, compared to 32 percent under U.S. policy alone. The researchers say these numbers reflect the U.S. commercial fish market, 90 percent of which is sourced from Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins — regions that are heavily influenced by emissions from non-U.S. sources, including China.
From their projections of reduced mercury consumption, the researchers estimated health impacts to the U.S. population under both policies, then translated these impacts into economic benefits. They characterized these in two ways: projected lifetime benefits from an individual’s reduced exposure to mercury, including willingness to pay for lowering the risk of a fatal heart attack, cost savings from avoided medical care, and increased earnings; and economy-wide benefits, or the associated productivity gains of a national labor force with improved IQ and fewer heart attacks, as a result of reduced exposure to mercury.
Based on these calculations, the team estimated that by 2050, emissions reductions under the Minamata Convention on Mercury would lead to $339 billion in lifetime benefits and $104 billion in economy-wide benefits in the U.S., compared to $147 billion and $43 billion, respectively, from MATS. The global treaty, then, should lead to more than twice the benefits projected from the domestic policy.
Overall, while both policies are projected to lead to roughly the same amount of reductions in mercury deposited on U.S. soil compared to a no-policy case, Americans’ consumption of mercury by 2050 are estimated to be 91 percent lower under the global treaty, compared to 32 percent under U.S. policy alone. The researchers say these numbers reflect the U.S. commercial fish market, 90 percent of which is sourced from Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins — regions that are heavily influenced by emissions from non-U.S. sources, including China.
From their projections of reduced mercury consumption, the researchers estimated health impacts to the U.S. population under both policies, then translated these impacts into economic benefits. They characterized these in two ways: projected lifetime benefits from an individual’s reduced exposure to mercury, including willingness to pay for lowering the risk of a fatal heart attack, cost savings from avoided medical care, and increased earnings; and economy-wide benefits, or the associated productivity gains of a national labor force with improved IQ and fewer heart attacks, as a result of reduced exposure to mercury.
Based on these calculations, the team estimated that by 2050, emissions reductions under the Minamata Convention on Mercury would lead to $339 billion in lifetime benefits and $104 billion in economy-wide benefits in the U.S., compared to $147 billion and $43 billion, respectively, from MATS. The global treaty, then, should lead to more than twice the benefits projected from the domestic policy.
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| Ecolur.org http://tinyurl.com/j3afaeu |
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Determining how regulatory policies will ultimately lead to health and economic benefits is a complex and convoluted problem. To trace the pathway from policy to impacts, Selin and co-author Amanda Giang, a graduate student in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, began with estimates of mercury reductions set by both the Minamata Convention and MATS.
The team then used an atmospheric transport model to trace where emissions would settle over time, based on the reductions proposed by each policy scenario. From regional depositions of mercury, they then estimated the resulting mercury concentrations in fish and mapped these concentrations to seafood sources throughout the world.
Next, the team correlated seafood sources to fish consumption in the U.S., and calculated changes in human exposure to mercury through time. They used epidemiological models to estimate how changes in mercury exposure affect incidence of health impacts, such as heart attacks and IQ deficits. From there, Selin and Giang used economic valuation methods to translate heath impacts into economic benefits — namely, lifetime and economy-wide benefits to the U.S.
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While the researchers were able to come up with benefits in the billions for both the global and domestic policies, they acknowledge that these numbers come with a significant amount of uncertainty, which they also explored.
“We’re trying to understand different drivers in the variability of these numbers,” Giang says. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in this system, and we want to understand what shifts these numbers up and down.”
For example, scientists are unsure how far different forms of mercury will travel through the atmosphere, as well as how long it will take for mercury to accumulate in fish. In their analysis, Giang found that, even taking into account most of these uncertainties, the economic benefits from the global treaty outweighed those from the domestic policy, except when it came to one key uncertainty: where people’s seafood originates.
“We do find that in our scenario where everyone is eating local fish, the benefits of domestic policy are going to be larger than the Minamata convention,” Giang says. “Our study points to the importance of domestic policy in terms of protecting vulnerable populations such as subsistence fishers or other communities that do rely on U.S. freshwater fish.”
“There are a ton of uncertainties here, but we know that mercury is a dangerous pollutant,” Selin adds. “When you put in a policy, how do you think about its ultimate environmental and human effects? We think this method is really a way to try and move that forward.”
“This is a terrific and very comprehensive study from a great research group,” says Charles Driscoll, professor of Environmental Systems at Syracuse University. "The study is timely because of challenges to the domestic Mercury and Air Toxics Standard through a Supreme Court ruling. This analysis of benefits builds considerably on the analysis of benefits conducted by the EPA when they established MATS. I think this is an important study and hopefully it will have considerable impact."
This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.
by Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
MIT Press Release dated December 28, 2015
MIT Press Release dated December 28, 2015
Abstract:
Mercury pollution poses risks for both human and ecosystem health. As a consequence, controlling mercury pollution has become a policy goal on both global and national scales. We developed an assessment method linking global-scale atmospheric chemical transport modeling to regional-scale economic modeling to consistently evaluate the potential benefits to the United States of global (UN Minamata Convention on Mercury) and domestic [Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)] policies, framed as economic gains from avoiding mercury-related adverse health endpoints. This method attempts to trace the policies-to-impacts path while taking into account uncertainties and knowledge gaps with policy-appropriate bounding assumptions. We project that cumulative lifetime benefits from the Minamata Convention for individuals affected by 2050 are $339 billion (2005 USD), with a range from $1.4 billion to $575 billion in our sensitivity scenarios. Cumulative economy-wide benefits to the United States, realized by 2050, are $104 billion, with a range from $6 million to $171 billion. Projected Minamata benefits are more than twice those projected from the domestic policy. This relative benefit is robust to several uncertainties and variabilities, with the ratio of benefits (Minamata/MATS) ranging from ≈1.4 to 3. However, we find that for those consuming locally caught freshwater fish from the United States, rather than marine and estuarine fish from the global market, benefits are larger from US than global action, suggesting domestic policies are important for protecting these populations. Per megagram of prevented emissions, our domestic policy scenario results in US benefits about an order of magnitude higher than from our global scenario, further highlighting the importance of domestic action.
by Amanda Giang 1 and Noelle E. Selin 21. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139;2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
Edited by Catherine L. Kling, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, and approved November 18, 2015 (received for review July 21, 2015)
"Benefits of mercury controls for the United States"
Significance:
Mercury is a globally transported pollutant with
potent neurotoxic effects for both humans and wildlife. This study
introduces an assessment method to estimate the potential human
health-related economic benefits of global and domestic mercury control
policies. It finds that for the US population as a whole, global mercury
controls could lead to approximately twice the benefits of domestic
action by 2050. This result is robust to several uncertainties and
variabilities along the emissions-to-impacts path, although we find that
those consuming locally caught freshwater fish in the United States
could benefit more from domestic action.
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