But a billion here or there doesn't make much difference. The EPA had the final word on mercury poisoning last month, when it released its new mercury regulations after receiving nearly 700,000 public comments on its proposed rule.

Before the rule came out, the inspector general of the EPA, the agency's watchdog, had called the process of creating it tainted by politics to suit Bush's free-market ideology. And the government's nonpartisan Government Accountability Office had diagnosed a similar distortion of science in the process to favor Bush's market-based approach. And just weeks before the rule came out, 28 senators sent a letter to the EPA, begging it to take stronger action than what it had proposed.

None of this meant anything when the agency came out with a rule that was even weaker. "This is just another example of a politicized process," says Olivia Campbell, the national campaign coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation. "The administration has put the polluters before the health of people and wildlife again. They just don't listen to people or scientists or even the states."

The rule calls for mercury pollution from power plants to be reduced 29 percent from 2005 levels by 2010, and 70 percent by 2018. But it also introduces a so-called cap-and-trade program, which will allow power plants to earn credits for larger reductions they make earlier. They can sell these credits to other polluters or bank them for later use. In the proposed rule, the cap on mercury in 2010 was 34 tons. In the final rule, the power plants can continue to emit 38 tons of mercury until 2010.

Critics argue that a toxin like mercury has never been subject to such a trading scheme before, and they worry that it will create "hot spots" of mercury pollution around the country, as some plants buy credits instead of cleaning up. "The EPA has never before allowed trading for a toxic pollutant," Campbell says. "And with good reason -- the Clean Air Act doesn't allow for trading of a toxic pollutant." Ten states, including New Jersey, Maine and California, are suing the federal government over the new mercury rules, arguing they don't meet the standards of the Clean Air Act.

State regulators fear that areas where polluters buy credits instead of cleaning up will continue to suffer more mercury pollution as well as the toxic fallout from it. Some 44 states in the United States have issued fish advisories about seafood caught in local waters because of mercury pollution.

Critics also argue that since plants can "bank" credits, they can reduce emissions earlier and earn credits to spend later on. So a "cap" isn't what it sounds like: Emissions won't be reduced 70 percent by 2018, they predict, and will probably fall short of that for years to come.

"EPA's own models show that due to this trading scheme, plants are not going to reach their 70 percent reduction until well beyond 2025," Campbell says.

A rule proposed during the Clinton era called for a 90 percent reduction of mercury by 2008. Environmental groups maintain that the Bush administration is legally obligated to meet that reduction level under the Clean Air Act. "The administration is using this as cover to adopt a 20-year delayed cleanup program requiring very weak pollution cuts," says Walke from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

For its part, the EPA maintains that even if it eliminated all the mercury pollution from U.S. power plants, it still wouldn't clean up the fish that Americans eat, since the fish supply is so global. "Airborne mercury knows no boundaries; it is a global problem," said acting administrator Steve Johnson in a statement. "Until global mercury emissions can be reduced -- and more importantly, until mercury concentrations in fish caught and sold globally are reduced -- it is very important for women of child-bearing age to pay attention to the advisory issued by EPA and FDA, avoiding certain types of fish and limiting their consumption of other types of fish."

So, for the moment, fish eaters will just have to fend for themselves.

Karen Perry, deputy director of the environmental health department at Physicians for Social Responsibility, has this advice: "For women who are of child-bearing age, we would advise they learn more about which fish are the cleanest and the safest and continue to eat fish in moderation and choose the lowest-mercury fish. The sad part of all of this is that fish is such a healthy food, we don't want to tell people not to eat it. So you have to give them more information, so they can make the best choices."

But even this type of "throw up your hands and save yourself" advice doesn't sit well with physicians who know that such recomendations alone won't solve the larger public health issue of what mercury is doing to kids. "It's important to advise families about high mercury levels in fish, but it's unconscionable to not reduce mercury levels in fish," says Trasande from Mount Sinai. "Otherwise, we'll be allowing mercury to poison a generation of our nation's children."

"Think of another disease that you could prevent that affects 600,000 patients in the U.S. a year," says Dr. Browngoehl. "Talk about No Child Left Behind! If you don't want to leave them behind, get the mercury out."

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