On January 20th, most of my group and I had an over-the-phone interview with Mike McGary. Mike McGary is a cousin of Nina’s mother, and has experience in ecology. He is and ecologist, he is an environmental consultant, and does environmental work for a living. He explained how mercury gets into our system. He said that coal is burned and then crushed all over the country, and that mercury has trace quantities in coal. So when you burn coal mercury gets dispersed into the atmosphere. One of the consequences of that is that it goes back into rivers lakes, and settles at the bottom, it’s then converted to methyl mercury which can be absorbed by the tissue of small animals. When those small animals get eaten by bigger animals, the bigger animals would end up with higher quantities of methyl mercury in their body. The quantities of mercury get bigger as you go farther up the food chain. When you reach the size fish humans eat, like salmon or trout, they have enough mercury accumulated in their body that if you eat that fish it becomes a health concern. It was really interesting having an over-the-phone interview with Mike McGary. It was helpful to our group that we talked to and ecologist, and get ideas and answers from him. If we have any questions in the future it will be helpful to email him those questions, knowing that we will get an answer that helps us.
