Talk:Mercury regulation in the United States

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): E1allen. Peer reviewers: E1allen.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

Hi. It looks like you have a good outline and are off to good start.

I have a few suggestions. Concerning the first section, generally Wikipedia articles do not have an "introduction" but rather a "lead section" of one to four paragraphs that define the scope of the article and summarize the contents. This style differs somewhat from what you may be used to, so I thought I might mention it now. Since most of the lead is a summary of the rest of the article, it might be easiest to write this section last.

Concerning the "health effects of mercury contamination" section, you might want to add something about the distribution and metabolism of mercury as well as the mechanism of mercury toxicity. Below are some recent review articles that I found by searching PubMed with the search term "mercury metabolism":

Aschner M, Onishchenko N, Ceccatelli S (2010). "Toxicology of alkylmercury compounds". Met Ions Life Sci. 7: 403–34. doi:10.1039/BK9781847551771-00403. PMID 20877814. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |doi_inactivedate= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Hintelmann H (2010). "Organomercurials. Their formation and pathways in the environment". Met Ions Life Sci. 7: 365–401. doi:10.1039/BK9781847551771-00365. PMID 20877813. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |doi_inactivedate= ignored (help)
Bridges CC, Zalups RK (2010). "Transport of inorganic mercury and methylmercury in target tissues and organs". J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 13 (5): 385–410. doi:10.1080/10937401003673750. PMID 20582853.
Tan SW, Meiller JC, Mahaffey KR (2009). "The endocrine effects of mercury in humans and wildlife". Crit. Rev. Toxicol. 39 (3): 228–69. doi:10.1080/10408440802233259. PMID 19280433.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Díez S (2009). "Human health effects of methylmercury exposure". Rev Environ Contam Toxicol. 198: 111–32. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-09647-6_3. PMID 19253038.
Taber KH, Hurley RA (2008). "Mercury exposure: effects across the lifespan". J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 20 (4): iv–389. doi:10.1176/appi.neuropsych.20.4.iv. PMID 19196923.
Vas J, Monestier M (2008). "Immunology of mercury". Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1143: 240–67. doi:10.1196/annals.1443.022. PMID 19076354. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
Clarkson TW, Vyas JB, Ballatori N (2007). "Mechanisms of mercury disposition in the body". Am. J. Ind. Med. 50 (10): 757–64. doi:10.1002/ajim.20476. PMID 17477364. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Clifton JC (2007). "Mercury exposure and public health". Pediatr. Clin. North Am. 54 (2): 237–69, viii. doi:10.1016/j.pcl.2007.02.005. PMID 17448359. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

For some of your other sections, the table in Mercury_poisoning#Prevention seems highly relevant and could be expanded upon.

I will pop in from time to time to see how things are going and offer suggestions. And again, if you have specific questions, don't hesitate to ask. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 09:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Professor's Comments

It seems that you are off to a good start. You have a very straight forward outline that I think should work. If possible, you might want to consider adding something on CBA of mercury contamination in the background material. After all, damages are what motivate the regulation.

Recall, the focus of the article is to be on policy related to mercury. What are the laws, regulations, programs and such? Where did they come from? What different approaches have federal and state government actors tried? What support is there for the approaches and how well have they worked? You have outlined the laws, but I don’t see much on other non-regulatory policy efforts.

I also don’t see much of a bibliography on your discussion page. You will need to build that up quickly.

Finally, as we discussed in class, you have to understand the science, uses and impacts of the mercury before you can understand its regulation or public policy to control contamination. You need a strategy to provide background information on mercury itself. Right now you have that built into the first couple sections of the article, which is fine. You might, however, want to consider breaking your piece into two separate articles that are cross-referenced if the background material starts to swamp the policy discussion. This is really a matter of judgment; others who are more familiar with Wikipedia can provide more guidance on that issue than I.

Great start. Keep at it.

Enviro econ guy (talk) 15:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, I agree that the focus of the article should be on policy and the scientific background section should be directed towards understanding the policy. If the background sections are kept relatively short, there should be no need to split the article. Boghog (talk) 21:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting suggestions

Again, I think you are off to a great start. I am busy right now in real life but I should have more time this weekend to comment in more detail. In the meantime, I have the following suggestions:

Per WP:REFPUNC and WP:PAIC, citations should be placed after punctuation.
If you cite the same reference more than once, you can combine them so that the reference appears only once in the reference list (see for example the use of "<ref name="url_Binational_Toxics_Strategy"/>" in this edit).
Per WP:HEADINGS, section headings should not explicitly refer to to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer (headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated). For example, it is not necessary to include the word "mercury" in the section headings since it is assumed that the subject of the article as a whole as well as each of the sections is about "mercury".

Cheers. Boghog (talk) 19:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:LOWERCASE, only the first word of the titles of articles and sections should be capitalized, all other words should be lower case unless they are proper nouns. Boghog (talk) 20:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am impressed with your table. These are tricky to set up and you have done it well. The source of this data should be of course be cited (for example [1]). BTW, I did notice a small error in the source. In some of the exposure limits, the unit of "μ" is used where I think they mean "μg". Boghog (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Footnotes 23-43 need to be reformammted. I suggest using {{web cite}}.
If citing to a Federal Register notice, please cite to the volume and page number.
If citing to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), please cite the volume and section number.

Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 10:23, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Classmate Comments

What a great article with a ton of information! I liked the fact that you had some of sections linked up to other Wikipedia pages so that people can look into that information further, while not repeating a whole article on your page. The table you set up is very impressive given that I know how hard they are to get correct. I think that once your group fills in the missing piece you will be all set. My one comment is that in the regulation section maybe if you can link up the various act to the page that would be good or include a little bit more information about what those acts do to regulation mercury. Meghan.lyn.fischer (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Overall this article is very clear. You have provided a comprehensive information concerning the mercury to the reader, particularly people who never known before about this issue. However, when I was reading this article, seemed I was reading the science article instead of the policy article since it contains more scientific aspects. From my point of view, might be for the science aspects, such as the definition and source of mercury, just give the link of such matters. I am pretty sure there are a lot of references or articles that discuss about it, particularly in other wikipedia articles.

Under the US regulation, you mentioned about direct and indirect effects of mercury. Might be it would be more appropriate if this part is moved to previous section to have good structure.

In terms of mercury policy in international and national level, it would be better if you put it in the following order:

Global regulation to prevent mercury contamination
The US regulation to prevent mercury contamination

In this case, global regulation can be acted as an international guideline in developing national policy.

ekurniaw 19:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ekurniaw (talk • contribs)

Overall your article looks great! I agree that your regulations table is a really helpful way of presenting that information. I also think that your article focuses too much on scientific mercury information. I also noticed that some of the scientific information hasn't been sourced. Lauschro (talk) 22:22, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Link some of the compounds and regs to Wikipedia pages or else expand a bit. For example, a sentence or two on how FIFRA or SARA relate to mercury specifically and what policy goals they try to implement.
That environmental standards table is amazing! Shouldn’t there be a citation though?
Great job guys!
Are there any other programs that might have been missed? Any clear mercury related policy issues that are currently being lobbied for but might not yet be reflected in law (i.e. removing mercury from schools)
Barriers to policy implementation?
Benefits? http://mercurypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sundseth_k_et_al1.pdf Yingkeli (talk) 05:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great article and well researched/sourced. I'm sure you all are still working on getting sources and statements lined up. My only suggestion for feedback is to use more of the wiki-tools, especially tables like you did with the regulations and limits, to organize information in a reader-friendly format. Pirateskot (talk) 21:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake or Possible Vandalism?

I found this line under the table of American standards: "* 100 g/kg (dry wt) for sludge disposed in lined or unlined facilities" with 40 CFR 503 as the source of the standard. 100 g/kg is 10% mercury. I find that hard to believe, and in any case could not find anywhere in 40 CFR 503 (nor even a 100 mg/kg figure, in case it was a simple typo). With the tables in §503.13, I was able to verify the other sewage sludge standards. (Which still seems high IMHO, I mean we're putting hazardous waste on our agricultural fields? Just my opinion; rant over.) If anyone can find a separate source for the 100 g/kg figure feel free to add it back, but it's not in 40 CFR 503. Warren Platts (talk) 13:28, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ambient Water Standards ?!?

And while I'm at it, the ambient water standards listed in that table have got to be false as well: e.g., this one: "0.012 μg/L for freshwater chronic exposure". Now, there are 1 billion with a b micrograms in a liter of water. Am I right? And so 0.012 μg/L is equivalent to 12 parts per trillion? So we can drink water that's got 2 ppb Hg, but we're not allowed to go swimming everyday in water with a concentration greater that's 2,000 times less? That doesn't make sense.... Warren Platts (talk) 13:48, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK I found a link to an EPA website for ambient ""methyl""mercury water standards for aquatic life that make more sense: usually, MeHg makes up a small percentage of total mercury (THg) concentration. Updated accordingly (although the date of recommendation was 1995).Warren Platts (talk) 19:14, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Missing References and Information

Some of your information lacks citations. For instance, the entire section on "What is Mercury" is full of scientific information but has no citations at all. Additionally, the citations for footnotes 1, 2, 3, 6, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 30 all link to webpages that no longer exist. Furthermore, over half of your sources are from different pages on the Environmental Protection Agency's website. While this is a credible source, the article could be improved by having a better variety of sources and more peer-reviewed scholarly studies.

The article is also lacking important scientific information. For example, under the "Environmental Effect" section, nothing is written about the biological and chemical processes that cause uptake of Methyl Mercury in the cells, or about why Methyl Mercury bioaccumulates so easily. While this article is about regulation, not science, it is vital to include a full scientific background of the issue in order to understand the necessity and purpose of strict regulations.

Lastly, while the article contains some important information on attempts at regulation, the article could be improved by inserting a section on the challenges that policy makers face when trying to regulate mercury at the local, regional, national, and global level. E1allen (talk) 02:30, 4 November 2016 (UTC)E1allen[reply]

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