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Article: Freshwater fish mercury levels hint at larger problem
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- May 26, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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CAMBRIDGE -- Airborne mercury from power plants, incinerators and
other human sources may emerge as the acid rain of the 1990s, federal
officials and scientists said yesterday, as American freshwater fish
become increasingly contaminated from traces of the toxic metal that
drop into the water.
Mercury pollution poses little threat to people while it is in the
air, but tends to build up over time in the flesh of sportfish such
as trout and bass. Biologist William F. Fitzgerald of the University
of Connecticut estimates that mercury levels in freshwater fish have
roughly tripled over the last century.
Environmental activists charge that Massachusetts regulators
aren't taking the threat ...