ISRI Cautions EPA Over Mercury Switch Program

“Administrator Johnson has clearly overstated the progress made by the parties discussing the MNSRP,” said Robin Wiener, ISRI’s president in a released statement. “There are serious flaws in the memorandum of understanding that is proposed as a structure for future discussions. Characterizing the progress made as only needing to ‘hammer out the final details’ is, at the very least, overly optimistic.”

In 2002, ISRI helped form the Partnership for Mercury Free Vehicles, a collection of associations representing environmental groups, auto dismantlers, scrap recyclers, and the steel industry, in an effort to address the issue of mercury switches in automobiles, a source that can potentially put over 50 tons of mercury into the environment. ISRI and the partnership have worked hard to establish effective switch removal programs that are now operating and in place in several states.

“We welcomed the opportunity to address this issue on the national level,” Wiener said. “And we are committed to finding a solution to the problem of mercury emissions resulting from automobile applications including a sound and effective mercury switch removal program. However, we have grave concerns that the NMSRP, as currently outlined in the working memorandum of understanding, will not achieve the important goal: protection of human health and the environment. “