s refuse to accept mercury, this does not address the full problem. The supply of mercury in this country exceeds the need for it. The Department of Defense holds 5,000 metric tons that it is no longer going to need, and another 3,000 metric tons is simply not going to be used by the manufacturers who originally purchased it. Proponents of the ôretirementö option suggest that this mercury be held or disposed of properly and not sold to other nations.
Another alternative for dealing with mercury pollution is to stop the sale of all fish from mercury-polluted waters. Since water is not just polluted due to mercury-tainted industrial wastes being dumped into the water but is contaminated by contaminated air, any water that is not in a protected area is polluted to some extent (2). Even water at the Poles is polluted because of this phenomenon. Therefore, all of the mercury originating from industrial smokestacks eventually finds its way into our water and our food supplyùnot just our air. The danger comes when this mercury encounters oxidants that transform it into gaseous mercury; gaseous mercury is highly soluble and ends up in lakes and streams on precipitation. Once in the water, ôbacteria transform it into methylmercury, the harmful form of the metal that fish and, in turn, people and other predators accumulate in their tissuesö (2). This makes mercury virtually ubiquitous and very difficult to keep out of the environment, yet millions of cans of tuna are sold every dayùtuna that has lived in that tainted water. One way of stopping the mercury poisoning is to simply stop allowing the sale of tuna and other fish that have swum in open waters. Only fish raised on fish farms in protected waters would be sold.
The third option under consideration is a series of harsh penalties for manufacturers whose processes release mercury into the environment. It has been argued that they should change their processes within 12...