Earth Mothers on Patrol

By Michelle Cottle

I've never been much of an environmentalist. Maybe it's because so many of the most ardent activists have a shrill, we-must-abandon-our-vehicles-and-go-live-in-a-mud-hut tone to their message. Or maybe it's because I was reared in the South, where a disproportionate number of folks drive big trucks, regard wildlife as something to be shot and mounted and deploy enough hairspray every day to open ozone holes the size of Georgia. Whatever the reason, even after more than a decade of environmental indoctrination on both the West and East Coasts, I still have a tough time working up gut-level outrage over mankind's assault on Mother Nature.

Except when I am pregnant--an unsettling condition in which I now find myself. At that point, I morph from a mild-mannered supporter of environmental regulation into one of the most obsessive antipollution zealots you can find outside of an ecoterrorists' convention.

When people prep you on what to expect when you're expecting, they enumerate the physical horrors--headaches, hot flashes, shortness of breath, back pain, leg pain, groin pain and a whole raft of digestive disorders. What they don't warn you about is the extreme paranoia that sets in about the potential threat to your fetus from everything you eat, drink, breathe, wear or even think about. Forget alcohol, cigarettes and Valium. When a woman is on the nest, the inadvertent ingestion of cheese, fish, undercooked meat or unfiltered tap water is enough to provoke a shrieking phone call to the poison-control hotline.

As a result, I have become the environmental movement's dream convert. I pore over news reports of the latest oil-company atrocity; I hector my family about their oversize vehicles; I buy only organic milk and eggs laid by vegetarian, cage-free, anxiety-free chickens; and I'm an easy mark for any ecoactivist in search of a signature on his petition.

Which is why I'm so enjoying the Bush Administration's recent heartburn over its new regulations on the emission of mercury, a nasty neurotoxin that in recent years has become the bane of pregnant women because of its accumulation in popular fish like tuna. As with lead, adults can process an impressive amount of mercury before major damage is done. Not so fetuses. In 2004 the Federal Government warned pregnant women against eating more than 6 oz. of albacore tuna a week. Unfortunately, that warning came a few months after the birth of my first child--which meant I spent the next 72 hours frantically weighing piles of fish flakes to determine how much damage my weekly tuna sandwich might have inflicted on my wee son during gestation. Needless to say, this time around, not one morsel of tuna salad has passed my expectant lips.

Nine states filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) two weeks ago, charging that its reduction requirements for mercury are grossly inadequate and will allow some of the most egregious polluters (typically older, coal-fired power plants) to avoid installing mercury controls indefinitely. I might be inclined to cut the EPA some slack if the rule-writing process didn't smell so, well, fishy. But the Government Accountability Office and the EPA inspector general have criticized the agency for ignoring scientific evidence and allowing industry lobbyists too much input.

I recently discovered an unexpected ally in my mercury mania: Christian conservatives. It seems that segments of the evangelical community are starting to view environmentalism--or, as they prefer to call it, "creation care"--as part of their biblical mandate. But getting the ground troops mobilized behind a cause long scorned as touchy-feely nonsense requires a bit of creativity. (Witness the flop of the 2002 "What would Jesus drive?" campaign.) Thus some religious leaders are linking pollution to the hot-button issue of unborn tots, who, after all, tend to be the most vulnerable to environmental toxins. At the pro-life march in Washington in January, two evangelical activists carried a large banner urging STOP MERCURY POISONING OF THE UNBORN. The idea for the banner came from Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals--who, perhaps not coincidentally, has a close family member with a learning disability that he suspects may have environmental roots.

Sadly, my guess is that Evangelicals won't embrace "creation care" with as much gusto as they did, say, the anti-gay-marriage movement anytime soon. Still, I take satisfaction in knowing that even a few leaders of that politically influential constituency have started pestering policy makers about more aggressive pollution control. If I have to lie awake nights being worried that the runoff from some waste incinerator in Ohio is somehow going to cause my baby to be born with webbed feet, I want Karl Rove and Bill Frist to be fretting about those issues as well. o