Bill Curbing Mercury Contamination Awaits Governor’s Signature

 

The New Jersey Senate passed a bill that would make New Jersey the second state to force automakers to put a bounty on toxic mercury switches used to illuminate trunks, glove boxes, vanity mirrors and other auto accessories. Manufacturers would have to pay auto recyclers at least $1 for every switch they pull out of a junked car under the bill, which passed the Assembly in October and awaits the signature of Acting Governor Richard Codey.

The goal is to prevent steel mills, the state’s largest unregulated mercury source, from melting down and spewing out the toxic metal. “This is a major public health victory,” Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell said, in a Star-Ledger article. Codey’s spokesman said the governor would “review the legislation when it reaches his desk.”

Mercury causes developmental problems, even retardation, in children. Every water body in New Jersey has a mercury advisory in place for at least one fish species, and between 10 and 20 percent of New Jersey women of childbearing age have elevated levels of mercury in their bloodstream, Campbell said.

The state’s seven steel mills swallow 25 to 100 cars an hour, spewing out an estimated 1,000 tons of toxic mercury per year, a state DEP report said last year. About half of that comes from the tilt-activated switches in cars, the report said. Feeding the steel mills are several hundred auto dismantlers and recyclers. The bill requires those dismantlers to find and remove mercury switches, a process that takes about five minutes, a state DEP report said last year.

In addition to paying recyclers $1 for every switch, automakers will have to pay the DEP 25 cents for administrative costs related to the new program. They will also have to pay to ship, store and dispose of the mercury.

A gram of mercury, about the amount in one of the bullet-sized switches, is enough to contaminate a 20-acre lake. Nationally, there are some 20,000 pounds of mercury contained in scrap autos that are recycled every year in the U.S., the DEP report said.