Required reading

Environmental Defense and EPRI perspectives

Environmental Defense. 2003. Out of Control and Close to Home This is not in the hard copy Required Course Pack. Although it is a little long (16 pages), it is a quick read, and most of the material should already be familiar to you. Compare to the Levin paper.

Levin, L. 2003. A new perspective on mercury in the human environment. Written remarks prepared for a hearing of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senate. 29 July 2003. This is not in the hard copy Required Course Pack.

Evers et al. 2007. Biological mercury hotspots in the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada BioScience 57: 29.

Questions for class discussion

Environmental Defense and EPRI, a scientific dispute

1. The Environmental Defense and EPRI (i.e. Levin) perspectives differ dramatically. Both concern mercury depositions in the US. To what extent do the differences arise because they are simply framing the results differently? To what extent are they basing their conclusions on different scientific studies.

2. The readings provide scarce detail as to how one estimate the mercury deposition produced by a power plant. How would you go about doing this? What data would you need? What assumptions would your model make? How could you alter key assumptions so as to produce results favorable to the Environmental Defense or EPRI perspectives? Hint: There are basically two approaches: Build a computer model, or gather empirical data.

3. Chapter 23 of Science for Business, Law and Journalism has a table entitled "Bogus Designs." Alas, it appears to CMP that none of these points apply to the present conflict. How might one extend the Table, to capture the essence of the disagreement between Enviromental Defense and EPRI?

Evers et al. (2007)

4. What is the goal, study design and conclusion of Evers et al. (2007)?

5. What is the major weakness of the Evers et al. (2007) analysis? How does the Evans et al. study extend prior work on Northeast U.S. mercury hotspots?

6. Where does the mercury come from that is creating mercury hot spots in the Northeast?

7. As it turns out, mercury hotspots arise not only near mercury sources, but also in other circumstances. Explain.