Mercury rule lets hazardous air pollutants off the hook.

Mercury rule lets hazardous air pollutants off the hook O n March 15, the U.S. EPA issued the long-awaited and controversial rule establishing trading as the mechanism for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired plants. Although the debate over the rule focused on how best to control mercury releases, critics say that an opportunity to also regulate several other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), such as dioxins, arsenic, and lead, may have been lost. The Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) establishes the United States as the first nation in the world to address mercury from this pollution source. When combined with the new Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), the provisions for power plants should ultimately cut mercury emissions by as much as 70% from 1999 levels, sometime after 2018, EPA officials say. CAIR, which was announced on March 10, is designed to control SO 2 and NO x emissions. To do that, utilities most likely will install wet scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction systems, which capture mercury as a co-benefit, notes EPA. Indeed, these technologies might control several HAPs, says EPA's Jason Burnett, who declined to name which HAPs might be captured. " We have decided that after the implementation of CAIR and CAMR [any HAPs of potential con-cern] won't pose a hazard to human health, " says Burnett, policy advi-sor to Jeffrey Holmstead, assistant administrator for air and radiation. Environmentalists and many scientists have argued that mercury should be regulated under section 112 of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA). This section requires that each plant install the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) and address the 189 ple in the United States live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, points out John Stanton of the National Environmental Trust (NET), a nonprofit environmental group. He adds that about 460 U.S. coal-fired power plants burn more than 900 million tons (t) of coal every year, which produce 42% of all emissions reported under the Toxics Release Inventory. Indeed, these plants are the largest emitter of toxic gases, arsenic , and chromium, and are the second-largest source of lead and di-oxin air pollution, NET notes in the 2004 report Beyond Mercury. Still, CAMR presumably doesn't bar EPA from someday regulating other HAPs from power plants, says Amar Praveen of the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, an association of air quality control divisions. John Mil-lett, an EPA spokeperson, …