The Environmental Protection Agency has just completed one of the most comprehensive reports ever done on the sources of mercury and its effects on human health and wildlife. It says that about 80,000 pregnant women and half a million children are getting too much mercury mostly from canned tuna. The Mercury report which Congress requested in 1990 was completed a year and a half ago, but the EPA was reluctant to make it public. Finally a court ordered the report released this December 19th. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, has led the effort to make the study public. Steve Curwood asked the Senator why there was so much delay.
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