When mercury enters the environment, it takes on a highly toxic form that is almost completely absorbed into the blood and distributed throughout the body, including to the brain. This organic mercury can accumulate within the food chain and become concentrated in certain fish, posing a health risk to anyone who eats them. So far, 40 states have had to issue advisories warning against consuming fish from various bodies of water. The problem is widespread, with approximately 5 million American women of childbearing age suffering from bloodstream mercury levels above safe levels, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tragically, the children of these women will have an elevated risk of birth defects, including mental retardation and problems with motor skills.
Thermometers are one common source of mercury in the environment. Personal experience tells many of us that they are easily broken, and in fact, American Poison Control Centers receives an average of 16,000 phone calls from people who have broken mercury thermometers every year. Broken thermometers typically end up in municipal waste incinerators, wastewater, or landfills – all of which then allow the mercury to be released into the environment. In fact, mercury thermometers are the largest source of wastewater mercury contamination, according to the American Metropolitan Sewerage Association. One thermometer, though it contains less than a gram of mercury, can contaminate a 20-acre lake for an entire year.
In addition to the threat of mercury contamination from household products, surplus mercury from industrial use also threatens our environment. Currently, there is no national policy to address surplus mercury. Up until now, mercury that is no longer used has most frequently been sold to other countries. It has even ended up as an environmental hazard in our own waste stream. In fact, many tons of surplus mercury from the Holtrachem manufacturing facility in Orrington were at one point shipped to India, but when protests broke out in India over the mercury, it was shipped back. Last year, the Natural Resources Council of Maine arranged to store 84 tons of the Holtrachem mercury for four years, in order to keep it from being resold or released into the environment, and to give the federal government time to create a permanent mercury retirement policy.
I have authored legislation known as the Mercury Reduction Act that will help us to develop just such a policy and diminish the threat that mercury contamination poses to all of us. I was very pleased when this bill was recently approved unanimously by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, clearing it for consideration by the full Senate. My bill would accomplish three major goals. First, it would ban the sale of mercury fever thermometers, which are no longer manufactured anywhere in the U.S. and for which there are cheap, accurate, and readily available substitutes. The bill would also allow millions of American consumers to swap their mercury thermometers for free digital ones, ensuring that mercury from their thermometers does not end up polluting our lakes and threatening our health.
Second, my legislation would create a national policy for the retirement of surplus mercury. The Mercury Reduction Act would authorize $1 million each year for the EPA to purchase and store surplus mercury safely, in order to prevent environmental damage, and it would direct the EPA to refrain from reselling mercury in commercial markets. Mercury sells for about one dollar per pound, so even a small portion of the $1 million could purchase a great deal of mercury. Storage costs should not be high either. The Department of Defense, for example, is currently storing 10 million pounds of mercury, and that cost, as of a few years ago, was about $100,000 a year. In short, a relatively small amount of federal resources could go a long way toward combating this problem.
Finally, my legislation would create a task force to address the broader problems of mercury pollution around the globe. The task force would be chaired by the Administrator of the EPA and would consist of the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy and the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The task force would report to Congress on ways to reduce the human health and environmental risks from mercury, examining ways to retire mercury from thermometers and other sources, collect it from industrial and other large areas of concentration in the U.S., and reduce the total amount produced, used, and released around the world.
The Mercury Reduction Act would save taxpayers money by reducing the costs of treating contaminated water, and it has been endorsed by a wide variety of advocacy groups, from environmental organizations to the American Academy of Pediatrics. My bill having recently won unanimous approval from the Environment and Public Works Committee, I am hopeful that Congress will be able to take action soon to enact this important legislation and help ensure that our children can enjoy the health and the environmental benefits that would result from a move away from mercury.