I am the fomer Air Pollution Control Manager for the City of Evansville, IN. I worked at the City EPA office for 7 years and have worked as an environmental consultant for the better part of my 30 year career. I'm retired now. I've been fishing and swimming since I was 2 years old. I was a lifeguard and water safety instructor for years and am an EMT and Certified Firefigher and Scuba Diver on the Thunder on the Ohio Rescue Team. I've been around the water all my life. My father was a lifeguard and taught me to swim at an early age. He also taught me to fish.

I studied preveternary medicine to become a doctor for animals. I switched majors after two years in prevet and got my degree in Environmental Sciences. I've taken all the introductory classes for veternary medicine and have a very good background in the sciences. Chemistry, physics, Genetics, Pathology etc.

I'm responding to this post to help you all learn how air pollution travels though the air from the smoke stack to the ground.

I've taken a class in Dispersion Modeling where we use data about the smoke stack and it's gases to determine where the smoke will fall out of the sky. We use things like the gas temperature, stack height above the ground, velocity of the gas coming out of the smoke stack and other factors such as wind direction, frequency of wind from all directions and wind speeds to determine where the pollutants will go. These calculations can be done by hand or via computers. With computer modeling we can predict the concentrations of the pollutants such as SO2 or Particulates all around the smoke stack for miles. With computers we can determine where the smoke from many factories will go and drop out of the air. The models are checked for accuracy by doing actually continuous monitoring at ground level for the pollutants of interest.

Now all lakes and rivers are as contaminated as others. Those that are directly near the smoke stack and directly downwind will have the higher concentrations.

Particle size and density have a lot to do with how far they travel once they leave the smoke stack. Heavier particles will fall out of the air first. Lighter particles can travel hundrends of miles on the air currents. Smoke from the midwest can travel to the Easter Parts of the USA. See studies conducted by USEPA on Sulfates that travel from the Midwest power plants to the smoke Mountains.

Some power plants these days have better air pollution controls on their stacks than they had back 40 years ago.

So to actually know how much mercury is in the fish it's best to read the Advisories which are based on actually sampling the fish and testing them for mercury in their bodies.

Back when I took BioChemistry at Purdue University our class did a study or helped the Professor with his study. We just did the leg work. We collected mice from around the campus and dissected them up. We collected the hearts and tested them for organic pollutants. DDT was or pollutant of interest. We tested and found DDT in all the mice. Some had more than others. We checked all the different organs to determine which one's had the most DDT in them. I don't remember all the details of those test results but it was interesting to do the research. This is going on at all the major universities in the US and there is a lot of chemcial knowledge about how chemcials are transported thoughout the ecosystem.

Just know that there are a lot of things going on in the environment that you may not be aware of. We banned the use of DDT many years ago but it's still persisting in the environment today. It can be found in fatty tissue of animals that live in the Northern Parts of our Planet where DDT was never used. It's been dispersed thoughout the globe.

Some chemcials will break down and become harmless to humans and other life but some persist for years.

We can't control everything but we sure can try to control the most harmful chemicals and keep them under control. That's all we can try to do. Like some said, we are not going to live forever and we can't protect ourselves from all the chemicals in the enviroment. But we can try to control the chemcials we make and release to some degree.

I personally will still eat fish but I won't eat fish that I know were caught in the Ohio River. All I have to do is think about my field trip down to the local Sewage Treatment plant and think about how many of those plants there are up and down the Ohio River between Evansville and Pittsburgh PA. I'm just glad that I don't live in Lousiana! They get the crap from everyone upriver. And that's a whole lot of crap and toxic chemicals thats in the Mississippi River down there. There is a reason why there is a area of the gulf of mexico that's all void of life. That's where all the toxins end up being dumped into the Gulf from the Rivers.

Quote Originally Posted by jcclark View Post
Last time I checked the Ohio Fish Advisory's the crappie
was the only one not having limits on how many you can eat.

As far as mercury, ALL LAKES have it too, it comes from the rain.
Most fish in the lakes have the same levels as the river ones.

Taylorsville lake is much more polluted than the Ohio, it's
a major problem with that lake and yet you never hear about that.
Sauger need clean water to live, most lakes can't support them and
yet they thrive in the river, Hmmmmm.