02/21/2026
This week, the EPA rolled back mercury limits on coal plants.
Mercury doesn't stay in smokestacks. It travels. It settles into rivers and lakes. It accumulates in fish. It enters the food we eat — and when it reaches a pregnant mother, it can cross into a developing baby's brain.
This isn't a regulation on paper. It's a chain reaction in the natural world.
Protections that had already reduced mercury emissions by 90% — with the technology already in place to keep them — were repealed this week.
When we talk about protecting ecosystems, this is exactly what we mean. Nature and human health are not separate conversations.
They never were.
