Massive Mercury Contamination San Francisco Bay

[Guest guest]

Hi All

This article from " The Examiner " was posted to the amalgams list.

I have included the entire post including the poster's comments, with her

permission .

Its about the massive mercury pollution from old gold mines in the region of

San Francisco Bay .

It would be interesting to do a count of Cfs & fibro patients living in the

region to see if numbers

are increased.

It also describes how people go out mining in these old mines and

inadvertantly take Mercury

home contaminating their homes etc.

Regards Cheryl

SF Examiner FAX 415-359-2766

" Page One Editor " Nicky Penttila

Address: 988 Market St, SF CA 94102

no website contact link, it's a new(ly owned) paper,

recently bought from Hearst, and actually doomed to fail.

Long story. It now has about 40,000 copies (printed) per day.

I recommend many letters to editor; being a new paper they will be

grateful for the response and feedback. Cover amalgams (not mentioned

in article, cremation venting, lawsuits, other symptoms, thimerasol,

maybe your stories, etc...

___________________________________________________

TOXIC LEGACY © Stoll of the SF Examiner.

Gold Rush mines are polluting the bay, not modern machinery.

Scientists studying the continuing mercury contamination in

San Francisco Bay now believe the primary source of the toxin is

effluent from mining operations in the Sierra Nevada more than a

century ago.

That discovery could force federal and state governments to spend millions

to accelerate cleanup of severely polluted mines in the Sierra and to take

emergency action on the worst sites. The state is also considering the issue

of stricter warnings on eating fish taken from Sierra waterways.

Previously, environmentalists believed the relatively high levels of

quicksilver affecting bay marine life was naturally occurring or came from

nearby factories and mercury mines. But a study released late last month

reveals that current levels of bay pollution can be traced to the 26 million

pounds of mercury that was pumped through mines in the the 19th

century. Mercury was used by Gold Rush miners to coax gold flakes

from rocks. The mercury problem was exacerbated by the use of water

cannons to blast holes into the rock, which flushed contaminated runoff

into mountain rivers and streams.

As much as 8 million pounds of mercury is believed to have traveled the

120 miles from the Sierra to the bay, despoiling mountain lakes and rivers

along the way. Fish caught in those waterways are full of the metal, and

state officials have begun to issue more warnings about consuming fish

caught in local waters. Mercury accumulates in animal tissues; large

amounts of it can damage their nervous systems.

If scientists are right, the bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

could continue to be polluted with elevated levels of mercury for

generations

to come. " It's a 150-year-old legacy that we're just finding out about, "

says Mike Humerlach, a mine hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey

and co-author of the new study on mercury pollution. " It's probably going to

continue for anther 15 years. "

Some critics of the environmental enforcement efforts say the government

should have known the extent of the pollution years ago. " I've said for

years

there was a lot of mercury up there, " said Pretap Chattergee, a chemist

and writer who has researched the effects of mining through an organization

called Project Underground. " The data's been there, but people have just

failed to recognize it and refused to fund new studies. "

The likelihood that millions of pounds of mercury remain in mine shafts,

and are destined for coastal waterways, has alarmed environmental officials

and has intensified interest in cleaning up mercury contamination at the

source. Several hundred major mines dot the Sierra Nevada, so regulators

must select the worst sites for remediation.

Some mines are so contaminated that U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency officials consider them hazardous waste zones worthy of

emegency action. That happened last year when Hunerlach investigated

reports that a recreational miner left the Polar Star Mine, near Dutch Flats

in Nevada Coundy, with four pounds of gold and 40 lbs of mercury. The

EPA spent $1.2 million last year to cart off tons of mercury-laden soil and

water before other neighbors could enter the tunnel and possibly poison

themselves.

Hunerlach and colleague Charlie Alpers looked at dozens of abandoned

gold mines in the Sierra, some contaminated with mercury so concentrated

that they could scoop up beads of it in pans from the tunnel floor.

(picture showing big 1/2 inch blob in mine water) They also tested fish in

five foothill reservoirs in Nevada, Yuba and Place counties, and were

surprised to find most exceeded public-health standards of mercury,

some by 30 times. (*** Sandy's note: My saliva, with but 6 amalgams

and 3 gold crowns in place, exceeded such by 50 times, on top of

years of almost daily fish ***) Their research led Nevada County to

issue advisories to anglers not to eat more than one fish a week from

local waters. The CA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

may also issue separate fish warnings in the near future.

The bay and delta have had fish advisories for mercury for years. In a 1997

study, the SF Estuary Institute, 44 out of 84 fish tested were found to have

elevated levels of mercury Eleven other water bodies are listed as impaired

and the list is quickly growing.

" Historic mercury contamination, " said , a Nevada County

supervisor, " has big impacts on our downstream neighbors, where mercury

is a real problem. "

Mercury and a related compound, methyl mercury, are potent neurotoxins.

They have been shown to accumulate in animals as they work their way

up the food chain from prey to predator. Mercury usually clings to particles

in the muck at the bottom of a river. Much of it accumulates behind the

hundreds of dams that punctuate rivers between the mountains and the bay.

One fear is that breaching those dams, a program favored by fish biologists

to aid upstream spawning, could release even more mercury into downstream

waters.

The government's research points to a previously little-known side effect

of hydraulic gold mining in the Sierras from 1853 to 1884, when miners

discovered that high pressure canons using water diverted from rivers

were more efficient at blasting away mountainsides than pick axes

and gunpowder.

More than 1.5 billion cubic yards of gravel and dirt washed through

underground tunnels and gold sluice boxes, turning riverbeds into

gravel pits resembling moonscapes that stretched for miles. The Starr Mine

and as many as 20 others collectively consumed the Bear River for more

than 500 vertical feet and spit it out again laden with mine debris.

Today, hundreds of abandoned mines are still releasing mercury, as

water dribbles into tunnels and out through artificial creeks.

On a recent jaunt to the Starr Mine in the Red Dog Mining District,

which closed in 1884 after hydraulic mining was banned in CA, two

scientists from the state's Water Resources Control Board entered the

mouth of the 1,000 foot tunnel and emerged minutes later with more than

a gram of mercury - with flecks of gold floating on its surface. By state

water

quality standards, a gram of mercury, if dissolved uniformly, is enough

to poison a 12-acre lake.

" We're trying to figure out if it's a problem from a water quality

standpoint, "

said Rick Humphreys, abandoned mines coordinator for the state water board.

" People have been going in there and mining. They're taking mercury that's

restricted to these tunnels and spreading it all around. They're taking it

home,

cooking it on stoves to get the gold, and poisoning themselves with

mercury vapors. It's a big problem. "

Recreational miners can be seen looking for gold on the Bear River every

weekend and many don hard hats and enter the old mines.

" People come down here and pan all the time, " said Watt, 21, an auto

mechanic from Grass Valley, who emerged from an exploratory trip through

one of the Red Dog mines. Hunerlach and Humprhreys said they, too, pan

for gold in their spare time because as geologists they know where to look.

But they said careless mine visitors may be making the water-quality

problem worse by stirring up the sediment inside and releasing powered

mercury particles into the water.

Yet those same weekenders could provide an intermediate cleanup solution.

Dave , a mine cleanup specialist at the federal EPA, says government

agencies should work with hobbyists to collect and properly dispose of the

mercury they find without going through environmental red tape.

" Hundreds of pounds of mercury were collected over the past three

months, " told conferees in San Francisco. " And the cost to collect

the mercury was probably about 5 percent of what the cost would have

been if it had been collected as a hazardous waste. "

(**** Sandy's note: hmmmm, maybe we could use people on death row

to do this, especially if Bush is prez - with his death penalty support

/implementation record, just as the governor of Pennsylvania once said

senior citizens should be used to clean up atomic spills, since they'd

be dead anyway long before the resultant cancer got them. But I digress.

Hg doesn't just " go away " now, does it. Lemme tell ya though,

if you've met these weekend miners, you would not want them

to be the ones to dispose of Hg safely or even handle it. ****)

Hunerlach, of the geological survey, said the Starr Mine, which empties

into the Bear River, appears more polluted than the Polar Star Mine, and

is a good candidate for government cleanup. But addressing all the

contamination in the mines, many now occupying public lands, would

cost hundreds of millions of dollars and probably will never happen.

(**** Sandy comment: Ah, capitalism, just gotta love it now, don't ya?

Did you ever wonder how " value " gets attached to money, anyway? ****)

Even if the upstream sources of mercury were stanched, the bay will still

be impaired by mercury for 100 years or more, since the metal is heavy

and washes out to sea very slowly, said Stefan Lorenzato, Humphrey's

colleague at the state water board, who is charged with setting the state's

standards for environmental mercury.

" You can't solve the San Francisco Bay mercury problems without looking

at the delta and the Sacramento River, " Lorenzato said. " And you can't

solve those problems without looking at upstream tributaries. We used to

look at these areas discretely, as isolated pockets of pollution. Now we're

looking at the whole watershed, and discovering that it's all connected. "

(Sandy's comment: *** du-uh!!! - - Well, I suppose better late than never.

***)

What are the physical symptoms of mercury poisoning?

The most common pathway of mercury poisoning is eating contaminated

fish. Exposure to high levels of mercury can permanently damage the brain,

kidneys and developing fetus. Effects on brain functioning may result in

irritability, shyness, tremors, changes in vision or hearing and memory

problems.

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