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Photo Kaimi Rose Lum
Long Pond is one of five ponds containing mercury-contaminated fish. |
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Mercury in ponds tied to air pollution
Banner Daily Update Mon. Dec. 31
By Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
New scientific evidence to bolster the unflattering perception of the Cape spit as the “tailpipe of North America” came to light in a recent study of five ponds in Truro and Wellfleet.
Working with the U.S. Geological Survey and the state Dept. of Environmental Protection, ecologists at Cape Cod National Seashore took samples of tissue from fish at Truro’s Great Pond, Snow Pond and Slough Pond and Wellfleet’s Dyer Pond and Long Pond. The results, which came back two weeks ago, showed high levels of mercury in the fish — most likely caused by air pollution.
“With pretty solid speculation we think a lot of it comes from atmospheric deposition,” said Carrie Phillips, the Seashore’s chief of natural resources. The Cape is downwind of the coal-fired power plants and incinerators across the Northeast and into the Midwest, she said, which means we are on the receiving end of the cross-continental gradients of mercury that are the subject of ongoing study by the USGS.
Although “we don’t have hard, fast data on how much mercury is coming from anthropogenic [man-made] sources,” she said, the evidence indicates that those sources are to blame for a good portion of the mercury polluting our air and water.
A warning against consuming fish caught in the five ponds went out immediately following the test results. The general public is urged not to eat any fish at all from Long Pond and Dyer Pond and to limit consumption of fish from Great Pond and Slough Pond to two meals per month. In Snow Pond, the public is asked to limit consumption of largemouth bass to two meals per month.
For more on this story see this week’s Banner
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Dec 27th, 2007