Mercury: What Oceana Does
Oceana’s campaign to stop seafood contamination takes a two-pronged approach.
First, we are calling on grocery stores to protect their customers by posting warning signs about mercury in seafood.
Customers should know about the FDA’s mercury advice before buying fish for their families.
A number of grocery stores have started posting these signs, joining Oceana's Green List, but many still haven't gotten on board.
Secondly, Oceana campaigns to eliminate mercury-based chlorine production in the United States.
When Oceana’s campaign was launched in early 2005, there were nine mercury-based chlorine facilities in the United States, "the Nasty Nine."
Since then, two factories have closed and three others are in the process of converting or have converted to mercury-free technology. The companies that refuse to eliminate mercury use in chlorine production include:
- Ashta Chemicals -- operates one plant in Ashtabula, Ohio.
- Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN) -- operates plants in Augusta, GA and in Charleston, TN.
- PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) – operates one plant in Natrium, West Virginia.
These chlorine factories rival mercury emissions from power plants. In fact, these plants collectively emitted more than 700 pounds of mercury in 2007. The problem is likely to be even worse, since these factories also cannot account for tons of "lost" mercury every year.
To convince these last four factories to eliminate mercury use, Oceana has community organizers in Tennessee and Georgia to rally local support to encourage factory modernization. Additionally, Oceana works on H.R. 2190, the Mercury Pollution Reduction Act of 2009, which would phase-out the 19th century process in favor of mercury-free technology.
