House committee will hear Hunt’s bill for mercury stewardship

Lawmaker emphasizes need for recycling potentially dangerous lights

February 2, 2009

OLYMPIA – Sponsored by state Rep. Sam Hunt, the “Product Stewardship Recycling Act for Mercury-Containing Lights” will receive a public hearing in the House Environmental Health Committee this Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 4) at 1:30.
Hunt’s House Bill 1469 would set up “convenient and environmentally sound product-stewardship programs for mercury-containing lights.”
The programs would include collecting, transporting and recycling these lights “as a way to strengthen protection for the health of our citizens, and for the health of our environment, in general,” said Hunt, D-Olympia.
He said the legislation would require that government, commercial, industrial, and retail facilities and office buildings must recycle their spent lights that contain mercury. Producers of a covered light product sold here in the Evergreen State would have to participate in a product-stewardship program for the product.
The program would be required to collect, for no charge, any unwanted products for reuse, recycling, processing, or safe disposal. Processing and disposal facilities established to operate product-stewardship programs would also be monitored by the Department of Ecology or some other environmental-health agency.
Producers, wholesalers and retailers would be prohibited from selling these lights unless they’re participating in an approved stewardship program, said Hunt, who added that a department Web site would list all approved producers that are participating in such a program.
“Even just a small, almost undetectable amount of mercury can be harmful and even deadly to humans and wildlife,” Hunt emphasized. “This legislation is a commonsense proposal for us to be more proactive in stopping this threat to citizen health and safety.”
Hunt pointed out that mercury can be the underlying cause of mental-health disorders; vision, speech and hearing problems, and brain, kidney and lung damage.
The Thurston County lawmaker in previous years has sponsored legislation to prohibit the disposal of products that include mercury, unless the product is recycled safely.
A Human exposure to mercury usually comes from eating fish that has been contaminated,@ Hunt said. AThousands of health advisories regarding mercury-tainted fish have been announced in dozens of states. Here in Washington, the Department of Health has issued advisory warnings for women of child-bearing age and young children not to eat some kinds of fish.@
The House Environmental Health Committee meeting this Wednesday will be held in House Hearing Room C on the first floor of the John L. O’Brien Building on the Capitol Campus.
Here is a Web link to Hunt’s HB 1469.