MORE MERCURY 1

I just quickly skimmed through your article, "You’re Being Poisoned" in the Portland Phoenix [News, February 13].

I wonder if you had a chance to speak with anyone involved in Maine Interfaith Power & Light or the Maine Green Power Connection. Green electricity is an effective consumer choice to reduce mercury emissions here in Maine and in other parts of the United States. Putting pressure on elected officials to clean up mercury emissions while paying for standard-offer electricity is like stepping on the brake and gas pedals at the same time. If you want to stop mercury emissions, don’t buy standard-offer electricity. Switch to green power instead.

If you’re not familiar with the various forms of green electricity — including tradable renewable energy certificates (a.k.a. "Green Tags"), I highly recommend checking out www.MaineGreenPower.org. Basically, you can pay to determine how electricity is generated. The more Green Tags you buy, the more electricity is generated from wind and solar sources — and the less is generated by burning coal. As you note in your article, coal-fired power plants are a major source of mercury in our environment. But did you know that coal-fired plants are completely unnecessary — we don’t have to burn coal to generate our electricity? The only reason we do is that it is so cheap.

It would be great if our elected officials suddenly did something to eliminate mercury emissions. In the meantime, everyone who buys electricity can put their dollars to work cleaning up our air, water and food. Next time you pay your electricity bill, decide whether you want to pay for poison along with your power. It’s your choice — switching to green power is easy and affordable. It takes about three minutes to sign up online; green electricity costs about 25 cents a day extra for the average Maine household.

When you switch, you’ll join more than one thousand Mainers (including Governor Baldacci) who are buying green electricity for their accounts.

Thanks for writing such an interesting article!

Fred Wilson Horch

Project Coordinator

Maine Interfaith Power & Light

Brunswick

MORE MERCURY 2

I am sure you are aware of the mercury burden that children receive in their vaccines. If you look at my son’s chart: www.momsagainstmercury.com/willmercuryexposure.htm, you will see that my son was grossly overdosed by ethyl-mercury he received in his vaccines. Although more research has been done on methyl-mercury, we know that ethyl mercury is just as dangerous. Please take the time to look at our Web site (www.MomsAgainstMercury.com) and you will find lots of proof that many children became neurologically impaired after receiving thimerosal- (mercury) containing vaccines.

I know that your articles pertain mostly to environmental mercury. However, the federal health agencies have widely been talking about environmental mercury and forgetting (I am sure purposely) that children were overdosed on mercury via vaccines. Nobody will own up to the problem, even though at a recent IOM (Institute of Medicine) meeting that I attended, many scientists stated there was a link between the increased amount of mercury children received via vaccines and the huge increase of neurological disorders we have seen in our country.

The few that felt like there was not a link at the meeting did research on children in other countries and found the amount of mercury those children receive is far less than [is received by] US children.

Angela Medlin

via email

PS: The rate of autism was one in 10,000 children in the late 1980s. The Center for Disease Control reported two years ago that the rate has skyrocketed to one in 250.

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