The scourge of mercury

The industry by-product that is poisoning the world
Exposure to it makes birds lay fewer eggs, and renders them less capable of looking after the chicks that hatch, makes animals less skilled at hunting and foraging for food.
As for humans, it’s estimated that around 600,000 children born every year in the US have learning difficulties because of it.
We’re talking about the rising problem of mercury poisoning. Or should we say falling?
Three times as much mercury is raining down on us as did prior to the Industrial Revolution, polluting seas and soil, from whence it enters the animal and human food chain.
Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk from mercury consumed through contaminated fish, as the damage caused by mercury is particularly felt by the developing brain.
But it is also bad news for adult men, a link having been established with heart disease.
The Madison Declaration on Mercury Pollution, published this week in the international science journal Ambio, comprises five papers by experts in the field and offers a comprehensive summary of all our knowledge on the subject to date.
It makes for grim reading, and concludes that mercury accumulation is a “public health problem in most regions of the world” because, wherever there is industry that spews out mercury, there are winds to carry it tens of thousands of miles around the world, in what is called the ‘conveyor belt of bad air’.
Mercury emissions have decreased significantly in Europe and North America in the last 30 years, now accounting for just 25 per cent of the world total, compared to Asia, where emissions are escalating, and which is now responsible for 50 per cent of the world total.
But we have no cause to pat ourselves on the back.
We’re down only because we’ve sent our most polluting industries into the low-wage economies of the east, not because our governments are committed to tree-hugging.
And in so doing, we have done developing nations no favours.
Mercury poisoning is a horrific problem for those who live up close to it.
The first famous case of widespread mercury poisoning dates from 1950-1969, in Minimata, in southern Japan, where emissions from chlor-alkali plants proved to have a devastating impact on the central nervous and reproduction systems of the local populace.
These symptoms became known, collectively, as Minimata Disease.
Even years later, as follow-up studies found, the impact was persistent, manifesting in a marked decline in the male birth rate due to foetus abnormalities.
In the Philippines, where mercury is a by-product of gold-mining, contamination of water-courses and, in turn, fish led to children being born with chronic nerve damage and many were noticeably underweight.
And in China, villages living in the shadow of its 2000+ coal-fired power stations see their crops turn grey, the water they use to boil their locally-grown rice turn the same colour, the air thick with stench, and their people given to such horrendous inflictions as fits and shaking, and increased incidence of killers like stomach cancer.
Of course, like carbon dioxide and radioactive particles, mercury is never just a local problem, and the effects of dirty industry can be felt at the other end of the world.
For instance, in the arctic Faroe Islands, where there are no mercury-related industries, pregnant women have been affected by mercury absorbed through whale meat, the whales having absorbed the substance from the sea.
These women gave birth to children with a catalogue of blood and nerve defects, despite the mercury poisoning being at quite a low level.
Fish and animals suffer too, as a 2000 study by the National Wildlife Federation (US) report - Poisoning Wildlife: the Reality of Mercury Pollution - revealed.
The study found that fish with high levels of mercury in their systems had difficulty schooling and spawning, that birds laid fewer eggs and were less able to care for their young, and that mammals had impaired motor skills, which lessened their chances of survival.
Human children affected by mercury poisoning may have difficulty concentrating, impaired skills in language, memory, fine motor skills and visual- spatial abilities.
In extreme cases, they may have severe retardation.
Mercury is also associated with lung and kidney impairment.
The fact that mercury emissions are down in the west, and that the imminent catastrophe of carbon-related climate change is absorbing all the headlines, perhaps help to explain why we live in such ignorance of mercury pollution which in turn allows governments off the hook when it comes to doing anything about it.
The US is particularly bad in this respect.
The clean air acts of 1970 and 1977 should have cleared up the mercury problem but they didn’t because they included the ‘grandfathering’ - or exemption - of pre-existing plants from new legislation, on the grounds that they wouldn’t be around for much longer.
They’re still around now, and continue to duck the regulations while expanding their capacity.
Never mind the kids with learning problems - there’s money to be made!
China is now a big culprit too, its rapidly expanding economy generating an insatiable thirst for energy, provided by coal-fired power plants, which are cheap, and dirty.
Jozef Pacyna, director of the Centre for Ecological Economies at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, estimates that China emits around 600 tons of mercury a year, constituting one quarter of the world total.
And that figure is only set to rise, and rise.
What can be done?
Some would argue that, if we want to see China act, we must act first.
After all, whose economic development model is China emulating, if not North America’s and Europe’s?
After all, who buys up all the cheap goods manufactured in China for next to nothing, if not people living in North America and Europe
Global treaties have a bad rep, which makes tackling global problems so difficult.
Take the Kyoto Protocol. America has withdrawn, the UK is clearly on course to miss all its targets, and China was never a party to it.
Klaus Toepfer, of the UN Environment Programme, suggests that targeting a single pollutant, in this case mercury, as part of a worldwide treaty may be the best approach.
We did fairly well with CFCs remember, so there is cause for optimism if the scale of the problem and the solutions to it can be sufficiently amplified to prompt action.
In China, new rules regarding sulphur dioxide emissions should help as the technology used to scrub sulphur from emissions also filters out mercury.
But if progress on cutting carbon emissions is anything to go by, we could be waiting a long time for action on mercury pollution.

Free school meals

As the Scottish Socialist Party once again gives MSPs a chance to vote for free, healthy school dinners for all pupils this week, Free School Meals Campaign co-ordinator Felicity Garvie gives us the low down on the Scottish Executive’s mealy-mouthed proposals and new research from Hull, where free school meals have been a Michelin-starred success. Meanwhile, Roz Paterson looks at the history of our campaign, and the successes we have already won.
For the last time in this session the Parliament will have the chance to give free, healthy school meals to all Scotland’s schoolchildren on Wednesday 14 March.
The final debate and vote on the Executive’s Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Bill will see Frances Curran MSP move amendments to achieve the policy objective the Scottish Socialist Party has campaigned on for over five years.
Thousands of parents, teachers, health professionals and schoolchildren will be hoping that our politicians will finally have the guts to do right by them and vote for free school meals.
We won’t be holding our breath, though. Sadly the Executive has refused point blank to countenance the idea, even though it is backed by hundreds of organisations and influential people throughout civic society, and dragged its heels at every stage of the game.
Furthermore, the current bill amends the original 1980 Education Act to impose a duty on local authorities to charge for school lunches. This is quite clearly a step backwards and an attack on the principle of universality.
It also actually says quite explicitly that at the discretion of the local authority, any food and drink can be provided free of charge except lunches!! How small-minded is that?
Although there are sensible things in the bill such as the need for all food and drink in schools to conform to nutritional guidelines and sustainable development principles, the fact that free lunches are excluded and local authorities have a duty placed on them to charge for school lunches can only be seen as a perverse and petty gesture to the policy’s popularity.
The Executive must therefore answer the question, how do they propose to reverse the current downward trend in school meals uptake? Through ‘Hungry for Success’ they have succeeded at least in part in getting more healthy food into schools, but much of it is going to waste while pupils still opt for the pizza and chips, or go outside to the burger van.
Making healthy lunches free is the one simple, effective way of improving uptake. Children’s dietary habits wouldn’t be changed overnight and it will take hard work on the part of everyone involved, but it can be done.
Hull has proved that. After three years of monitoring the council’s ‘Eat well, do well’ programme, which provides every primary school child with a free, nutritious lunch, Hull University has recently issued a report which demonstrates how crucial the universal aspect of the policy is. Leading Hull University researcher Jo Pike will be at the Scottish Parliament for the debate and will showcase the report’s main findings:

1. The free element of the scheme has had enormous support among parents - 92 per cent of parents surveyed supported it, with only 4 per cent not in favour.

2. Since the scheme was introduced uptake has been way above the national average. In some schools it is as high as 97 per cent. The data also shows that increased uptake of school dinners has been at the expense of packed lunches, which have dropped on average by 17 per cent.

3. The nutritional quality of school lunches has improved significantly and now meets recommended guidelines for energy, fat including saturated fat, sodium, fibre, calcium, zinc and folate.

4. The scheme was implemented to try to improve health inequalities in Hull where life expectancy for men and women is considerably lower than England’s average, with higher rates of death from cancer and chronic heart disease because people eat less fruit and vegetables. The research indicates that children are eating more now, with teachers and parents reporting a willingness to try new foods.

Jo Pike commented, “As one of our teachers said, some children have a bad home life and knowing that they have food at school at least gives the staff some piece of mind.”
And that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? If it’s good enough for children in Hull, surely our children in Scotland deserve no less. The Executive needs to take that on board, once and for all.
The Scottish Socialist Party’s Free School Meals (FSM) campaign began in 2001, just two years into the SSP’s lifetime.
The plan was, and is, simple - give every state school child in Scotland a free, nutritious school lunch. That way, everyone has the opportunity to eat well every single day they attend school, taking a considerable burden off the shoulders of struggling families, removing the stigma attached to the current system, where poor kids can be identified and singled out, and raising the nutritional standards of our upcoming generation.
How could it fail?
In fact, although the FSM bill has been rejected by the Scottish Parliament twice - the second time, it didn’t even get debated - the campaign has far from failed. Scottish schoolchildren are reaping the benefits of our campaigning work, and the best is yet to come.
As mentioned, we were in our infancy in 2001, but even then, we secured the backing of the Child Poverty Action Group, the Poverty Alliance, the STUC’s Women’s Committee and UNISON for our bill.

No argument
By the time it reached committee stage in the Parliament, it was clear we had won the argument when the British Medical Association gave us their explicit backing. Children’s groups Children 1st and NCH fell in, as did anti-poverty groups Westgap and the Dundee Anti-Poverty Forum.
The debate itself threw into relief the attitude of the Labour Party, who claimed that the universality clause - which would mean well-off children would also benefit - was the problem. They still say that
But the real problem was that they didn’t want the SSP to get another popular bill passed, not after the Warrant Sales bill went through.
Furthermore, the former party of the working class is wedded to the free market, and to treating everyone, including young children, as commercial customers. Never mind that they are fed junk and that their health is on a nosedive towards obesity and diabetes - the market reigns, and multinational caterers must be allowed into this sector to make profit out of people.
One key aspect of the bill was the issue of stigma. Children entitled to free school meals were branded. Sometimes they had to join different queues, or use different coloured tickets. In one Glasgow school, they had to wait behind the paying children.
No wonder parents would do anything to spare their kids this humiliation, including forking out money they just didn’t have and which invariably went to the junk food pushers who circle our schools like vultures.
The evidence presented to support our bill was powerful stuff, and politicians were shocked by it. Though they voted down the bill, in June 2002, measures were put in place to tackle the stigma issue, such as the introduction of smartcards, which make it harder to tell who is in receipt of a free meal.
But stigma remains a problem, and only universal free provision can solve it.

Positive
The other positive effect of the FSM campaign was the Hungry For Success campaign, launched in November 2002 by the Scottish Executive in a bid to address the issues we had raised.
Hungry For Success was the first time an attempt had been made to get healthier food into schools and within a year, over £100million was poured into making this happen.
Though food improved, uptake dropped. If meals were free, parents wouldn’t have to give their children money for lunch, which would mean they couldn’t turn down the good food and buy chips instead. Everyone seemed to understand that, other than the Labour/LibDem coalition.
Hungry For Success made other mistakes.
Over £4million was squandered on a witless Healthy Eating Helpline that only a dismal percentage of people phoned, proving that our poor diet is caused primarily by poverty and lack of access to good food, rather than a failure to understand that salads and fresh fish are better for you than two Twixes and a can of shandy.
Within a year of the first bill’s debate, the FSM campaign had re-formed, and was stronger than ever.
By then, we had our six MSPs elected in 2003, and Rosie Kane took up the bill, later to be replaced by Frances Curran as Rosie had to take some time off.
By this time, the evidence against the status quo was mounting.

Nutrition
The Soil Association’s ‘Muck Off The Truck’ report found school meals to be processed rubbish with almost no nutritional value at all.
The cost of the food in a typical school dinner was revealed to be just 35 pence; less than that spent on prisoners’ food, or that given to army dogs.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver turned our stomachs with horror stories of Turkey Twizzlers.
This was all borne of the Thatcher government’s reckless deregulation of school meals, the abandoning of nutritional standards that had served us well since the Second World War, and the resultant de-skilling of school cooks as school kitchens became nothing more than places where hired hands re-heated food dispatched from factories several hundred miles away.
But it wasn’t just stomach-turning - it was heart-breaking.
Professor Mike Lean, Professor of Human Nutrition at Glasgow University, warned us that the generation going through school now would be the first to be buried by its parents.
Bad food would kill our children, through heart disease, cancers, diabetes.
We had become a society alienated from its food sources. No wonder children didn’t know what a leek was, or thought potatoes came from cows. The only food source they saw was the packet it came in.
The FSM campaign was about much more than just school - it offered a snapshot of contemporary society, and to what extent playing by market rules had degraded our lives, and our health.
Children no longer ate with their parents, the whole food culture had collapsed, and only the Sodexhos were benefiting.

Campaign grows
The FSM campaign began to grow. Organisations like One Plus and the Scottish Youth Parliament came on board. A headteacher from Finland attended one of our early launches.
Interviewed by a radio journalist, she was asked, but why do you make school dinners free? She looked taken aback, clearly surprised that anyone could ask such a question. Why wouldn’t you, she replied, if you want the kids to eat them?
The idea that here in Scotland, the government treats children as ‘consumers’ who must have ‘choice’ seemed nonsensical to her. Which is exactly what it is. We are supposed to look after our children, and teach them how to be healthy adults. We fail in this when we treat them like customers in a shop, leaving all the decisions to them.
The uptake amongst Finnish schoolchildren for the no choice school dinners - it’s soup, main course, fruit and yoghurt or nothing - is over 90 per cent.
Since 2003, the FSM campaign group has met every month, in different locations across Scotland, to progress the campaign.
And on the streets, SSP members have been tireless. Branch members describe people queuing up to sign the FSM petition, and some joining the party on the strength of our policy.
It was this hard work that kept the bill in the public eye. Newspapers, so beholden to the mainstream parties, barely gave it a mention.
When the SSP sent out the bill’s consultation, written by Bill Scott, it attracted over 500 responses, 96 per cent of them positive.
We had won the argument in society at large. Now it was a question of political will. If a Labour government could commit to spending over £1.5billion-a-year on Trident, surely it could find £100million for decent, free school meals?
We are now in a crisis, in terms of health, as deep as that following the Second World War, when nutritional standards were introduced for school meals. Children then were suffering the ill-effects of malnutrition.
Today, though the incidence of obesity is rising, they are again. We have children whose weight is escalating, but whose bodies are starved of the nutrients they need to develop properly. Our school canteens are full of calorie-laden food devoid of vitamins and minerals.
As in the 1940s, we need a radical, public health intervention to save this upcoming generation from a death sentence.
Commentators and politicians may claim, blithely and stupidly, that kids today have never had it so good.
They are blatantly wrong.
In Scotland, one quarter of kids come to school having eaten nothing. How can they concentrate and learn under these conditions?
And a third of all Scottish schoolchildren go home to nothing by way of a proper cooked meal. Maybe they get a sandwich, or money for the chip shop. How can they thrive like this? Why is the government doing nothing to help them?
The second FSM bill never made it to the debating chamber, the parliament deeming that it was out of time. Again, the campaign had been torpedoed in the name of political expediency.

Concessions
But important concessions have been won. The Labour Party have promised to extend free school meal provision to a further 90,000 children.
It’s not good enough, and still relies on the humiliating process of means-testing.
But it’s better than it was and will benefit many.
And we now have water coolers to provide free water to pupils in most schools, where once they had to buy the bottled variety, at enormous expense - 63 pence, to be precise, out of the £1.10 allotted to free school meals candidates.
And Glasgow City Council have introduced free breakfasts for primary school children across the region.
We have every reason to be proud of what we have achieved, of how we have driven the debate and, in so doing, brought positive changes into people’s lives.
But free, nutritious school meals remain an essential part of the society-wide changes we must make to ensure that our children don’t die of horrendous, man-made diseases before they have even had the chance to be adults.
Teachers, doctors, nutritionists and anti-poverty groups are on our side.
We’ll get there, just you wait and see.

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