Victory: Mercury banned from medical products - Michigan Environmental Council

Michigan
Environmental Report

Volume 25 . Number 1
Winter 2007

MEC STAFF

President
Lana Pollack

Office Manager and
Assistant to the President
Judy Bearup

Policy Director
James Clift

Senior Policy Advisor
Dave Dempsey

Campaign Coordinator
Roshani Deraniyagle-Dantas

Development Director
Andy Draheim

Education Specialist
Keith Etheridge

Communications Specialist
Elizabeth Fedorchuk

Energy Program Director
David Gard

Land Programs Director
Brad Garmon

Project Manager and Development Associate
Brianna Gerard

Health Policy Director
Tess Karwoski

Deputy Policy Director
Kate Madigan

Communicatons Director
Hugh McDiarmid, Jr.

Land Use and Energy Program Associate
Ariel Shaw

Land Programs Associate
Benjamin Stupka

MER Design & Layout
Rose Homa

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

Victory: Mercury banned
from medical products

Dangerous mercury will no longer be allowed in numerous medical devices sold in Michigan after a legislative victory in December.
In the closing days of the 2005-2006 legislative session, with leadership from Sen. Patricia Birkholz (R-Saugatuck), MEC and its allies succeeded in passing bills that phase out mercury thermostats, blood pressure measuring devices and esophageal dilators. These bills marked an important victory for Michigan citizens and wildlife and capped off more than a year of work with the Michigan United Conservation Clubs and the involvement of many environmental and public health groups to phase out products containing mercury.
We will now build on this momentum in the new legislative session to ban more products containing mercury such as manometers, barometers, flow meters, and relays and switches. In addition to reducing mercury contamination in our own state, by enacting these product bans, Michigan is playing an important role in achieving a national tipping point at which manufacturers will no longer find it economically feasible to produce products containing mercury because of bans in a critical mass of states.

—Kate Madigan, MEC

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