Mercury air emissions will continue to decline thanks to a voluntary national program to remove mercury-containing switches from vehicles headed for scrap. In its first year, more than 635,000 switches already have been removed from end-of-life vehicles. Collectively, those switches represent 1,400 pounds of mercury — more than the average coal-fired power plant emits in a year.
These and other results are described in the National Vehicle Mercury Switch Recovery Program Annual Report: 2006-2007, EPA announced on Sept. 27. According to officials, the results build upon other recent actions designed to protect public health and the environment from the toxic effects of mercury, including EPA's first-ever regulation to control mercury emissions from power plants, which was issued in March 2005.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.