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Posted - 03/02/2005 : 08:33:44
Study: Mercury hurts IQ of hundreds of thousands of children annually
Feb. 28 -- Mercury pollution reduces the IQ of between 300,000 and 600,000 American children each year and will cost the United States an estimated $8.7 billion in lost earnings annually, according to a study by scientists at the Mount Sinai Center for Childrenīs Health and the Environment in New York.
The study, which appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal that examines the impact of the loss of intelligence in American children caused by mercury pollution and quantifies the economic costs, according to the authors.
The loss of IQ due to methyl mercury toxicity affects 10 percent to 15 percent of the 4 million children born in America each year, according to the study.
Coal-fired power plants that produce 41 percent of mercury emissions nationwide cause about $1.3 billion of the economic loss, according to the study.
An abstract of the article is available online at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2005/7743/abstract.html.
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