Selenium, Mercury and Suction Dredgin, Get this out to your buds

[2cmorau]

Yaaahoooo
Print out and hand these out to your Lib buddies

There is no doubt that mercury and methyl mercury are hazardous substances when absorbed by humans through contact or when consumed within food in large quantities.

Federal and state regulatory agencies often cite mercury and methyl mercury in our waterways as a major factor for further restrictions on placer mining, and on suction gold dredge mining, in particular.

However, these regulatory agencies are minimizing selenium and its neutralizing effects.

In the Draft Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (DSEIR) on suction dredging published by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in 2011, the agency calls the evidence of selenium neutralization “lacking” despite numerous studies to the contrary.

The DSEIR reads, “Evidence from laboratory experiments has shown that selenium may be able to moderate the toxic effects of Hg when present at a molar ratio greater than around 1:1, and that most fish in the United States contain high enough levels of selenium to make this a possibility. However, epidemiological support for this phenomenon is lacking, and the limited evidence gives mixed results.”

In contrast to the claims made by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, numerous scientific studies have shown that selenium—a common element in soils and waterways—binds with mercury and methyl mercury to neutralize it.

Raymond and Ralston, in Mercury: selenium interactions and health implications, state, “Measuring the amount of mercury present in the environment or food sources may provide an inadequate reflection of the potential for health risks if the protective effects of selenium are not also considered. Selenium’s involvement is apparent throughout the mercury cycle, influencing its transport, biogeochemical exposure, bioavailability, toxicological consequences, and remediation.

For the rest of the story: Selenium, Mercury and Suction Dredging -- Studies Contradict California State Water Resources Board - Miner's News - ICMJ's Prospecting and Mining Journal

 

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[kuger]

very similar to this!
By Tom Pedersen
Pending Assembly Bill 711 would ban all hunting with lead ammunition throughout California. Whether you believe the bill is the result of an anti-hunting agenda or a true concern for the environment, the path this legislation has taken should raise everyone’s eyebrows.

Since at least the mid-1990s, some have opined that California condors feeding on hunter-shot game carcasses are poisoned by the lead ammunition present in the downed food source. In 2007 and 2008 anti-lead ammunition activists, focusing on metallic lead in ammunition while ignoring decades of contamination caused by various soluble lead sources including leaded gasoline and paint, bypassed the California Fish and Game Commission’s scrutiny and passed legislation (AB 821) that prohibits hunters in California from using lead-based ammunition in a so-called “Condor Zone.”

This push was justified in large part on a paper published in 2006 by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a result of litigation concerning these researchers’ failure to produce all of the underlying data related to that paper, however, they admitted that some of the data collected for the paper was deliberately not included in the data set that resulted in the conclusions published in the paper. The researchers would not specifically explain the omission, but a scientific rebuttal of that paper has been published outlining multiple flaws in both the methodology of the paper and the conclusions reached.

And what does the data collected to evaluate the efficacy of the AB 821 lead ammunition ban in the “Condor Zone” experiment show? Condor blood-lead levels on average have stayed about the same or slightly increased since AB 821 was implemented, even though the evidence suggests hunters are 99% compliant with the law and are not using lead ammunition in the “Condor Zone.” Yet again, instead of confronting the failure of AB 821 and looking at alternative sources of lead in the environment, the activists, many of whom also oppose hunting in general, doubled down. Incredibly, they now take the position that the failure of AB 821 to not result in a decrease of condor blood-lead levels just shows that the AB 821 partial lead ammunition ban did not go far enough. So now they are pushing for a statewide ban in AB 711.

Of course, it is simpler to vilify lead ammunition than to admit that determining the cause of condor mortalities is a complex and often idiosyncratic endeavor, especially when the anti-lead ammunition campaign is one that AB 711’s sponsors have embraced, without true scientific confirmation, for years.

The way AB 711 circumvents the regulatory system is insulting to public servants. The Fish & Game Commission, entrusted by Californians to address the management and protection of wildlife, recently expressed serious concern about the “science” being used to support the alleged negative environmental impacts of lead-based ammunition. So the Commission created a stakeholders group to evaluate the science being used for and against the condor-lead ammunition issue. How did the anti-lead ammunition proponents respond to this opportunity for scientific evaluation of their claims? They leap-frogged the Commission, avoided scientific scrutiny, and convinced a politician to propose a lead ammunition ban, Commission review be damned.

In the latest twist, the AB 711 campaign is upping the ante on scare tactics. AB 711 author Anthony Rendon, speaking from a prepared written statement in support of the bill, said that allowing hunters to use lead-based ammunition “is the equivalent of spoon-feeding lead to our children.” That’s a whopper of a false claim, and it is manufactured to distract the public from the fact that AB 711’s proponents are gaming the system to avoid the open scientific discourse the Commission previously proposed.

Lead ammunition ban proponents don’t want to lay their cards on the table about what the data does, and does not, say about condors and hunters’ use of lead-based ammunition. AB 711 rewards the proponents’ efforts to hide behind faulty science produced largely at the public’s expense.

Tom Pedersen is the retired Chief of Law Enforcement for the California Department of Fish & Game. He currently serves as the liaison on legislative and fish & game regulatory issues for the California Rifle & Pistol Association.

 

[kuger]

.....and this................

The extreme environmental advocacy group, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) issued a press release on April 16, 2013, stating that certain recent California condor (Condor) deaths were “definitively” caused by Condors ingesting lead while feeding on carrion that had been harvested with lead-based ammunition. CBD’s claims have been criticized by the head of the Arizona Condor Recovery Program and by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Now documents recently obtained from the Arizona Game & Fish Department (AGFD) under Arizona’s public records law show that even non-governmental environmental organizations within the Arizona Condor Recovery Program are frustrated with CBD’s fast-and-loose tactics.

Chris Parish, leader of The Peregrine Fund’s California Condor Restoration Project in Arizona (recently named Natural Resource Professional of the Year by the Arizona Game and Fish Commission) said the following in an email he sent to AGFD’s California Condor Project Coordinator Allen Zufelt on April 17, 2013, about CBD’s press release.

It seems CBD has jumped the start in reporting our lead situation and as usual didn’t get the numbers right and failed to recognize that both the voluntary and ban mitigation efforts have, as of yet failed to reveal a response in condor blood-lead levels and condor deaths . . . . I despise the fact that special interest groups take it upon themselves to represent the program and do so with faulty data. This should be brought to the attention of the public.
​

After the CBD release went out, Mr. Zufelt was contacted by a reporter about the CBD press release, and he expressed similar problems with CBD’s claims. When Mr. Zufelt saw CBD’s press release, he had this to say:“ [j]ust on the initial quick read . . . there are definitely some factual errors or other misleading statements which were engineered to hide the truth.” Ultimately, Mr. Zufelt provided the reporter, and others, with a list of the multiple “errors or misleading statements” made by CBD that he identified.

Attorneys for the NRA also saw the CBD press release, and they questioned CBD’s claims regarding the causal-link between condor deaths and hunters’ lead ammunition. The NRA requested evidence from CBD to support its claims, but CBD provided a non-sequitur response. By failing to comply with the NRA lawyers’ specific requests in its response, CBD effectively admitted that it had made unsubstantiated claims in its press release. More information on that exchange can be found here.

When it comes to facts, governmental and non-governmental observers seem to agree: CBD cries wolf about its recent unsubstantiated claims regarding a causal-link between hunters’ lead ammunition and lead poisoning in Condors. Visit www.HuntForTruth.org for more information regarding the debate on lead ammunition.

 

[Fullpan]

Thanks Kuger for making the effort to post all this info. I thought the law was going to slip through unchallenged. Maybe someone with money can start a re-call
initiative just like they are doing in Ore. with Bates?

apoligize to 2cmorau - off topic, but related.