Protect Lake Michigan News

CHICAGO, IL – In a major victory for children's health and the environment, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on Monday signed into law legislation prohibiting the sale or installation of mercury-containing thermostats. The bill’s signing concludes a successful effort, championed by State Senator Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago), State Representative Karen May (D-Highland Park), the Illinois Environmental Council, and Environment Illinois to pass two bills eliminating the largest classes of mercury-containing products still legal for sale in Illinois.

"These bills will combat the contamination and environmental hazards that stem from mercury’s unnecessary use in products," Said Hunter, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 1241, the thermostat bill. "This is another important step in strengthening Illinois’s laws regarding mercury, which causes significant health risks to a significant portion of our population."

"These bills are about protecting children's health," said May, chair of the House Environmental Health Committee and chief sponsor of House Bill 943, which bans the sale mercury-containing measuring devices and was signed by the Governor on August 13th. "If we don't curtail the major sources of mercury pollution, we are knowingly endangering the healthy development of Illinois children."

A potent neurotoxin particularly dangerous to developing children, mercury is widely used in thermostats and measuring devices such as medical thermometers, barometers and boodpressure cuffs despite the widespread availability of safer alternatives. According to U.S. EPA, these products account for over a third of the mercury in products sold nationally and are a significant source of mercury pollution in the environment.

"It's senseless to continue to expose Illinois’s children and environment to the risks of mercury when mercury-free alternatives for these products are available and widely used," said Max Muller, Environmental Advocate at Environment Illinois. "We thank Representative May and Senator Hunter for their advocacy, and Governor Blagojevich for signing these bills."

"These bills are a huge victory for Illinois children, but we also expect them to have a national impact," said John Gaudette, lobbyist for the Illinois Environmental Council. "As the nation’s fifth biggest consumer market, Illinois may serve as the tipping point beyond which manufacturers find it too expensive to continue making both mercury and non-mercury versions of their products. The more states that pass similar laws, the closer we are to having, in effect, a nation-wide ban."

Thirty-five percent of America’s population lives in one of a dozen states that already bans mercury-containing thermostats. Nine states currently prohibit mercury in measuring devices.

In addition to its health and environmental impacts, mercury’s unnecessary use in products also has a significant financial impact, as properly cleaning up a mercury spill can cost tens of thousands of dollars and researchers estimate the health impacts of mercury pollution cost our country billions of dollars per years.

When disposed of, mercury-containing thermostats and measuring devices are often crushed or incinerated, causing mercury’s airborne release. A single gram of mercury is sufficient to contaminate a 20-acre lake, and the average thermostat contains three grams of mercury. Illinois EPA estimates less than 4% of thermostats are properly recycled in Illinois and thousands of pounds of mercury from these products are improperly disposed of each year.

When airborne mercury lands in waterways, bacteria convert it to methylmercury, a potent toxin that can permanently damage the human heart, brain, and immune system. Fish in all Illinois waterways are contaminated with mercury. When a pregnant mother eats contaminated fish, methylmercury crosses the placenta and can cause irreparable damage to the developing fetus's central nervous system, resulting in developmental delays, motor, memory, and attention problems, and decreased IQ. Nationally, U.S. EPA researchers estimate that up to one in six potential mothers—including over 100,000 women in Illinois—has high enough blood-mercury levels to put a fetus at risk.

Mercury-free thermostats and measuring devices with equal or better performance are available at comparable cost. Honeywell, the nation’s leading thermostat manufacturer, has already eliminated mercury from its product line. Leading hospitals like Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic have phased-out mercury in medical measuring devices. In Illinois, Omron, a leading medical device vendor based in Bannockburn, has eliminated mercury in its products, and Consorta, a bulk purchaser based in Schaumburg, has eliminated mercury-containing devices from its purchasing contracts.

Illinois has made great strides in recent years in eliminating preventable sources of mercury pollution by passing bills to prohibit mercury in personal fever thermometers (2003), most switches and relays (2004), children's vaccines (2005), and automobiles switches (2006). Most significantly, in December 2006, Illinois became the largest coal-burning state to require power plants to eliminate up to 90 percent of their atmospheric mercury pollution.

"This bill further established Illinois's leadership on mercury reduction," said Gaudette, "In the last five years, we've gone from the bottom 5 to the top 5 among states in protecting citizens from toxic mercury."

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To view the new laws online, visit:

• Public Act 095-0452 (Thermostats): http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=095-0452&GA=095

• Public Act 95-0087 (Measuring Devices):
  http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=095-0087&GA=095