While taking an aerial look at the Ohio River Valley, dozens of coal-burning power plants are visibly situated within the landscape.  Many of us are accustomed to seeing these plants as we travel the region, with plumes of smoke rising in air, high fences, and industrial colors fixating us as we drive past. One such pollutant emanating from these plants is mercury, a naturally occurring element released into the atmosphere as coal is burned. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the average coal burning power plant generates 170 pounds of mercury, with only 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake making the fish unsafe to eat.  The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) tracks pollution, including mercury emissions for 486 electric generating facilities with the latest data available being from 2005.  According to the EPA’s findings the monitored facilities released 48.3 tons of mercury into the atmosphere in 2005.  Out of the top fifty polluting plants for mercury, four are located in Ohio and eleven more are in bordering states.  This positions Ohio in the middle of various air pollution issues.  When we started writing this article, our intention was to give an analysis of how the dangers of pollution from coal-burning power plants in the region have affected the health of people living in the region.  And while there is no question that mercury is emitted from these plants and that it poses a serious health risk with The Centers for Disease Control finding about 10 percent of American women carry mercury concentrations at levels considered a risk to a fetus, other factors make it difficult to pin down causes and effects.

Alongside pollutants affecting the landscape, we can see the tangible effects of extraordinarily high levels of poverty in Southeastern Ohio. Many of the poorest Ohio counties are in this part of the state, and poverty usually plays a role when looking at issues of health and the environment.

It is probably no coincidence that some of the highest cancer rates in the state can be found in this area as well, and while one may not necessarily produce the other it is important to keep in mind that all play off of each other.

There lays the crux of all this information.  If the landscape is affected by mercury pollution and the people living there on average suffer from higher levels of certain diseases, with many also living in poverty, we have an environment that needs to be deciphered and local peculiarities understood. But, how then do we begin to articulate what is happening on these sites? Despite their physical presence and their even more direct relationship to our lives through providing electricity, these sites exist off our most of mental maps. This makes it difficult to discern any negative ramifications from these plants.  Also, the idea of pollutants and toxins is not easily understood since we oftentimes do not see these hazards in our air.  The invisibility surrounding pollution and coal burning power plants makes it difficult to understand how they move through and affect the environment.

In this article we will look at what mercury does, at the research on mercury developing in the area, at local perceptions and discourse about mercury, and at what the future of this issue looks like.

What is Mercury?

Mercury is a naturally occurring element, occurring in several forms. Humans do not create mercury, but do release it into the environment primarily through coal-burning power plants, municipal waste combustion and medical waste incineration. Once mercury settles into the water or on land where it can wash into the water, mercury develops into methylmercury through microbial activity. Methylmercury is an organic and highly toxic form of mercury; the primary cause of mercury poisoning. People are mainly exposed to methylmercury through eating fish and shellfish. Elemental or metal mercury is found in items like thermometers and light bulbs, and can be dangerous when inhaled.

According to the EPA, many different factors determine how mercury affects a person’s health. The prominence of mercury in our environment has resulted in most people having some trace of mercury in their bloodstream. Severity of health effects depends on the chemical form of mercury, the dose, the age of the person, the duration of exposure, the route of exposure (inhalation, ingestion etc) and the health of the person exposed (epa.gov). The primary health effect is neurological damage, affecting the cognitive development of memory, attention, language and fine motor skills. This is why mercury poisoning is particularly harmful to pregnant women; the fetus is highly susceptible to the effects of mercury poisoning. Methymercury is able to easily cross into the placenta when the mother consumes mercury-contaminated fish and shellfish, causing fetal red blood cells to rise higher than that of the mother.

Mercury then is undoubtedly harmful, but is linked to an industrial process with many different stakeholders. Citizens use the power generated by these plants, while also living in environments affected by them. The power generating industry and politicians have conflicting and converging interests in developing what acceptable emissions standards are. In February 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court denied to consider a Bush-era rule that would have allowed a cap-and-trade approach to mercury, invalidating the EPA’s 2005 Clean Air Mercury Rule. The trajectory of the Clean Air Mercury Rule illustrates well the complex discourse on mercury by industry, government agencies, politicians and environmental groups.

In 2004 the EPA developed a suite of rules known as the Clean Air Rules of 2004, which addressed power plant emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides, ads well as ozone and fine air particle pollution, nonroad diesel emissions. The Clean Air Mercury Rule was apart of these rules. The Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) was issued in March 2005 by the EPA to address power plant pollution drifting past state borders by using a cap and trade program to target pollutants. The Clean Air Mercury Rule then built upon this legislation. According to the EPA The Clean Air Mercury Rule would involve two phases: capping mercury emissions to 39 tons, then by 2018 reducing emissions to 15 tons.

Online journalism has had a profound impact on the way people experience the news. The ability to link, ability to comment and amount of storage space allows for an interaction with the news not possible with print media. One of the most valuable things about the set up of Dot Earth is that is allows for experts to directly comment and engage with the material. Problems that face coverage of environmental issues in print, like not having enough room to do justice to a certain issue, don’t take the same form in online media.

During the past few years I have been amazed at how multimedia journalism has developed. I think the ability for science journalists to provide compelling visualizations of environmental issues will change the way these issues are tracked and discussed. Lack of visual appeal has been a problem environmental journalism in print media has faced. If people are able to interact with a multimedia depiction of an environmental concern this may make it easier for people to better understand the complexities of environmental problems.

Answering this question becomes complicated when desconstructing what exactly the “public” is and how exactly the public or publics track environmental issues and developments right now. Communities, business leaders, government agencies, environmental groups and others all have their own modes of discourse and communication when it comes to environmental issues. Our discussion in class touched on the development of hyperlocal news sites – it will be interesting to see if the hyperlocal could open up new ways for people to engage with environmental issues in their community. In their full potential hyperlocal sites might provide the ability for communities to connect with other communities internationally who have a common interest in a particular environmental issue.

Environmental organizations have the ability more than ever to connect with people through social media – some are doing it well while others aren’t, but this will continue to evolve over the next five years. Grist is an example of an online magazine focused on environmental that has had some success using social media. Independent media and online publications all have to potential to develop new ways to track environmental issues.

Chapter three and four of Environmental Communication focuses on the precedents and procedures that have shaped citizen’s rights to engage with environmental issues, as well as their shortcomings and alternatives. Cox boils down public participation in Environmental Decisions down to three basic legal rights: the Right to Know, the Right to Comment, and the Right of Standing. For each of these rights Cox gives an overview of their mode of participation, the legislation that gives that participation authority, and the principle signifying their importance.

• The Right to Know means access to information about environmental conditions or government actions potentially affecting the environment. One key piece of legislation ensuring this right is The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows citizens access to see the records of any federal agency after placing a request. The Right to Know is tied in with the principle of transparency – and its not a surprise that sometimes that is not in the interests of some companies who would find it easier to keep things behind closed doors.

• The Right of Public Comment ensures that citizens have an arena to engage with federal agencies and have their voice heard on actions affecting the environment. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires agencies to give a detailed report about any action with potential environmental consequences and then implement procedures for public comment.

• The Right of Standing determines what individuals have sufficient legal standing to testify about an environmental issue in a court of law. Sierra Club v. Morton set the precedent that someone’s interests could constitute a successful claim on standing. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife scaled back citizen suits in environmental cases by asserting citizens must have suffered a tangible and particular harm, similar to requirements in common law.

Cox gives some insight into what actually happens when citizens pursue these rights, and acknowledges weaknesses in the system. Citizens primarily use public hearings, participation in advisory panels, and collaboration with other interested parties to voice their concerns about environmental issues. The adversarial nature of these modes of participation can make it difficult for achieve meaningful communication between agencies and citizens. Those affected heavily by environmental hazards have pushed for a greater level of public access and direct participation to improve upon this. Chapter Four explores how many different facets of the public have become frustrated with these traditional forms of participation and developed their own modes of conflict resolution through collaboration and consensus. Mediation offers an alternative to the adversarial model, offering the opportunity for disputing parties to come together and work out an agreement.

1. In the various groups and organizations I have been involved in, the criticisms of collaboration and consensus have manifested themselves in one way or another. Does the class agree with the concept of the “democratic paradox” or is this tension something else entirely?
2. What other modes of engagement and participation can we add to the ones Cox has identified?

What shapes the way people perceive the environment? How do these perceptions affect they way they engage with the environment? Robert Cox’s Environmental Communication explores these two questions by giving a comprehensive overview of the origins and development of environmental communication. The first chapter explores three main themes: human communication as a form of symbolic action; our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors relating to nature and environmental problems are mediated or influenced by communication, and the public sphere (or spheres) emerge as a discursive space for communication about the environment (4). These themes can be compared and contrasted in the seven areas of study in environmental communication Cox identifies: environmental rhetoric and discourse, media and environmental journalism, public participation in environmental decision making, advocacy campaigns, environmental collaboration and conflict resolution, risk communication, and representations of nature in popular culture and green marketing.
Communication does more than transmit information; it shapes our understanding of the world, creates meaning and orients us to the wider world (12). Cox uses symbolic action to expand the conception of what the functions of environmental communication, saying “we draw upon language and other symbols to construct a framework for understanding and valuing to bring the wider world to other’s attention (15).”  The meaning of terms like “nature” and “environment” are shaped by symbolic action in our discourses and cultural representations. Cox goes on to discuss the public sphere as a primary realm of influence in communication.  Three misconceptions of the public sphere Cox identifies are that the public sphere is an official site or forum for government decision-making, a monolithic or ideal collection of citizens, and a form of “rational” or technical communication.
The second chapter takes a look at the major debates that have developed within the environmental movement in the U.S. As questions regarding what would become of the nation’s remaining wild areas emerged, so did two different perspectives: preservation and conservation. Preservation sought to ban commercial use of wildlife areas while conservation pushed for wise and efficient use of natural resources.
The book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson investigated the effects of chemical insecticides used by businesses on the natural landscape and set off the modern environmental movement.  This emerging form of environmental organizing led to the National Environmental Policy Act as well as the formation of Earth Day. While the broad-based environmental movement put into place some influential policy, for some it purported contradictions regarding human’s place in nature. Activists from minority and low-income communities began to articulate the concept of environmental justice to address how communities affected by environmental issues tend to intersect with societal inequalities. In the past couple decades. Global Environmentalism has emerged as a movement to address struggles for environmental quality internationally.

Questions:

1.    In our personal experiences and education, how have we been affected by rhetorical discourses about the environment?
2.    How might people in Southeast Ohio identify with the criticisms waged by those in the environmental justice movement?

Once a piece of writing begins to take form, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the information that needs to be processed and avoid dealing with “the nitty gritty”. Hancock offers advice for how to circumvent becoming distracted and overly negative when writing. Writing out loud, making a continuous effort to grapple with the material, and stopping yourself from polishing an early draft helps to push the writing process along. Hancock recommends starting a “bone heap” to store discarded sentences and paragraphs with the potential to be worked into the piece later on. I appreciate this tip because as I writer I often find it difficult to disregard parts of your writing you like even when they don’t work. As Hancock says, however, “the true gems will almost always call you back (97)”. Other technical writing tips offered by Hancock:

• Write with notes and references open to keep genuine facts and quotes visible
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with a draft to see where you can take the writing
• Avoid generalizing the data scientists give you by using vague words like “most” or “possibly”
• Rely on information from your source; don’t write beyond your own competence
• Acknowledge the emotional significance of a controversial topic, and handle your approach with care

When the time comes to refine a draft, Hancock emphasizes getting yourself to approach your writing with a fresh perspective. One way of doing this is printing out the draft, so you don’t get bogged down making tiny changes as you read through it again. Jotting down reactions at the border of the paper allows you to keep moving through the draft. If you’re in doubt that something you have written will be clear to the reader, it is usually best to throw it out or put it in the bone heap. According to Hancock writing is inherently uncertain and cannot be bound by universal principles. Trusting your own reactions to your writing as you go through the draft is the best route to go.

Ideas Into Words ends with a guide for writers who find themselves running up against a wall at some point in their writing. I found her point about getting out the term paper mindset particularly helpful because I think that is one of my weaknesses. According to Hancock, academic writing “tells” while professional writing “shows”. This is easy advice to understand, much more difficult to implement in practice. Hancock also discusses the research process, suggesting you should know the material a level deeper than you want to explain before you begin to write.

Questions:

How do you know when you’re emotionally involved in your work to the point where you’ve developed your own agenda?

A lot of the advice Hancock offers seems like it would be too difficult to implement if you were working on a tight deadline. If you don’t feel your writing is in a good place, when do you compromise to make deadline and when do you insist on an extension?

Jane Gregory and Steve Miller’s Science in Public explores how the relationship between science and the public has evolved over the years and discusses why a public understanding of science is important. According to Gregory and Miller the public’s attitude towards science was generally positive following World War II, but has become increasingly ambivalent in the wake of industrial pollution and nuclear threats. Enhancing public understanding of science has the potential to benefit science, national economies, national power and influence, individuals, democratic government, as well as intellectual, aesthetic and moral sensibilities.

The rise of popular science at the beginning of the 20th century took off as public interest in science grew. Gregory and Miller point out that “science journalism reflected the growing division between those who felt that science was the answer to all our problems and those who felt that it might be causing them.” Out of these tensions grew the proliferation of science fiction, the opening of new channels of communication between the science community and public, and new media representations of scientific research. Despite popularization of science and its increase in public culture, the role of science in public remains highly contested. The “two cultures” thesis is attributed to C.P. Snow, who argued there was a growing cultural divide between the sciences and the humanities. The two-cultures thesis has has been attacked for presenting a false dichotomy but remains highly influential in discourses about the conflicts between scientific values and other cultural values.

“In our society (that is, advanced western society) we have lost even the pretence of a common culture. Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major intellectual concern. This is serious for our creative, intellectual and, above all, our normal life. It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future. It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action.” C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures

Gregory and Miller touch on the difficulties facing science writers as science communication became more specialized and distinct. In Ideas Into Words, Elise Hancock provides a guide to the essentials of science writing and addresses the trepidations novice journalists might have approaching those in the science field. According to Hancock the science writer and the scientist are natural allies because they are both interested in the public’s understanding of science. Some helpful insights Hancock has about approaching science writing is to not become intimidated by the subject matter, find out how the research is being funded, know that scientific truth means evidence and be open to breaking research. When advising how to find story ideas, Hancock mentions how a brilliant person can make a story, and cites as his example Einstein’s charismatic appeal. The cover of Science in Public features Einstein smiling and waving; it is interesting how he is iconic in popular images associated with science.

Questions:

• What should the relationship be between environmental activists and scientific researchers?

• How do the suggested techniques interviewing scientists compare and contrast with our experiences interviewing other research experts?