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A Cambria County monitoring station on Cresson Mountain registered the highest average mercury levels in rain and snowfall in the United States and Canada in 2001, according to a National Wildlife Federation report released Thursday.

Experts say the biggest threat from mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can cause serious developmental problems in fetuses and children younger than 7, comes from eating fish contaminated in mercury-laden rivers and streams.

And rain, environmentalists contend, is mercury's major pathway from the atmosphere to the state's waterways and eventually the sport fish that attract more than 1.2 million anglers to Pennsylvania waterways each year.

The new study, which tested mercury levels at seven Pennsylvania mercury-monitoring stations from 1997 through 2002, found mercury levels on average tested 3.5 times higher than the level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers to be safe for humans and wildlife in surface waters. The state ranked third-highest for mercury contamination among the 13 states included in the study.

"This report reveals that the rain falling over Pennsylvania contains ominous levels of mercury and threatens the health of all people," said Mark Van Putten, president of the National Wildlife Federation.

Michael Fiorentino of the Clean Air Council's Pennsylvania office said the new study's Cresson Mountain numbers were troubling because the station is the only one of seven Pennsylvania monitoring sites located downwind from the massive coal-burning power plants that are among the state's top 10 sources of mercury emissions.

Although he conceded readings at Cresson Mountain may be compounded by mercury emissions from other, older coal-burning plants in Ohio and West Virginia that are carried into Pennsylvania by winds from the south and west, Fiorentino said the findings merit closer study.

"We need to have more monitoring sites positioned downwind from these facilities," he said.

A spokesman for Reliant Energy, the company that owns power plants in Indiana and Armstrong counties ranked first and third for Pennsylvania mercury emissions in recent federal reports, said mercury is a concern.

But Vince Brisini, environmental manager for air quality at Reliant's Johnstown office, said the company has been working on new technology that should result in significant reductions in mercury emissions.

He said Reliant recently installed new nitrous oxide controls at its Keystone plant near Shelocta. That capital investment should have a side benefit of reducing mercury emissions at the plant, which previously has ranked first in mercury emissions among U.S. power plants.

And a new Reliant plant scheduled to begin operations next year at Seward should remove 99 percent of mercury from emissions.

Brisini also questioned the Cresson Mountain numbers. "We don't know whether weather patterns or emissions are at the root of it. But we know that much of the mercury deposited in the Northeast comes from outside the United States," he said.

Felice Stadler, National Wildlife Federation policy coordinator, disputed that comment. "We know 60 percent of the mercury emissions in the United States is U.S.-based, and coal-fired power plants are the largest source of it in the United States," she said.

In addition to calling for reductions in power plant mercury emissions, the Wildlife Federation called for the elimination of mercury in products and manufacturing.

Fiorentino also called on Pennsylvania, which is one of 44 states that have issued advisories warning people to limit their consumption of fish from affected lakes, streams and coastal waters, to adopt more stringent guidelines to issue such warnings.

Fiorentino said the state began moving in the right direction in 1999 when it adopted EPA standards that define when mercury levels in fish should trigger consumption warnings.

"But that's not good enough. Ohio and New Jersey have a much tighter standard," he said. Ohio, he added, uses a 0.05 parts per million trigger and New Jersey uses a 0.08 parts per million trigger, compared to 0.13 parts per million in Pennsylvania.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection defended the state's standard, noting that it was developed by the EPA and validated by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

DEP officials also insist that the increasing number of mercury advisories does not indicate mercury concentrations (in fish) are increasing, but that more stringent standards are being applied.

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