Mercury trade-in discussion heats up State officials tout thermometer plan

BANGOR – They’re banned in Boston and New Hampshire. Freeport will consider a ban next week. Now it appears the days of mercury thermometers might be numbered across Maine as well.

As public awareness about the dangers of mercury continues to mount, several measures aimed at preventing future contamination are beginning to take shape in Maine. In recent weeks, proposals toward that end have included a mercury thermometer trade-in program, a statewide ban on sales and a voluntary decision not to sell them in the future on the part of several large drugstore chains.

Though a statewide collection program now is in the works, it still is in the very early stages. Among the unknowns are when the effort will begin and how much it will cost.

Once collected, however, the thermometers would be sent to a recycling company, where the mercury would be extracted and reused in new products, according to Michael Belliveau, director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s toxics and pollution prevention project. The NRCM is one of the environmental groups at the forefront of the battle to rid the state of mercury.

“The only real option is to recycle them,” Belliveau said of the thermometers in a recent telephone interview.

“For a small quantity, this is the right thing to do,” Belliveau said. He added that disposing of the mercury would be far too costly, but that there existed a thriving recycling market for waste products containing mercury. “There’s plenty of capacity, excess capacity in fact,” he said.

Until a trade-in opportunity does become available, the public should refrain from tossing their old mercury thermometers into the trash can, according to experts.

Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, senate chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said recently that he became concerned several years ago about mercury’s harmful effects on people and nature after the toxin turned up in the lakes of northern Aroostook County and in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, despite an apparent lack of obvious sources.

Martin announced plans earlier this month for a statewide trade-in program aimed at keeping highly toxic mercury, found inside of many thermometers, from contaminating the environment.

Martin said he envisioned a program in which consumers would take their old household thermometers containing mercury to a drugstore and trade them in for environmentally friendly models, preferably at no cost to consumers and minimal, if any, cost to the state.

In a related measure, the Department of Environmental Protection plans to request a statewide ban on the sale of mercury thermometers, David Lennett, director of DEP’s Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management, said Tuesday. To implement a collection program without such a ban would be pointless, he observed.

As public awareness of mercury’s toxicity continues to grow, several major chain drug retailers have announced plans to stop selling thermometers that contain it, according to a report published in December by the Chain Drug Review. Participating chains that do business locally include Brooks Pharmacy, CVS, Kmart Corp., Rite Aid Corp., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

A spokesman for the NRCM, one of the state’s chief environmental groups, said he was pleased that steps are being taken to remove mercury from the waste stream, but cautioned that isolating existing stocks is not the final solution.

“This is all a temporary strategy,” Belliveau said.

Relatively safe in its natural ore form, mercury becomes deadly after it is processed and converted to an elemental state, Belliveau said. The problem, he observed, is that technology to render mercury into an inert, or nontoxic state does not yet exist.

Mercury damages the liver and the brain while eroding the nervous system. Unborn and young children and the elderly are most vulnerable. Mercury is especially dangerous because it accumulates in increasing amounts as it rises through the food chain.

According to the Department of Environmental Protection, thermometers are a significant contributor to mercury pollution in the environment.

Belliveau agreed, noting that the amount of mercury in just one thermometer – about half a gram – is enough to render all of the fish in a 10-acre lake unfit to eat.

Broken fluorescent light tubes, which no longer can be disposed of in Maine landfills, are another major mercury source. Coal-fired utilities and incinerators release the heavy metal into the air.

The DEP estimates that 155 pounds of mercury a year are deposited in Maine’s environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 17 tons of mercury from thermometers ends up in the nation’s landfills each year.

“A large part of determining the cost will depend on how big a role the state will play,” Lennett said. While details, including cost figures, still are being refined, Lennett said he believes success hinges on public-private partnerships to keep the program affordable.

For the time being, Mainers who wish to trade in their old mercury thermometers for a safer version will have to wait for the opportunity to do so. In November, Regional Solid Waste, a quasi-municipal entity which serves about 30 Portland-area communities, sponsored a thermometer trade-in as part of a larger mercury collection program sponsored by the Portland Water District, according to RSW environmental specialist Mark Arienti.

During the swap, RSW took in 270 mercury thermometers, giving out digital versions in return. The mercury thermometers, along with mercury-containing light fixtures and similar hazardous materials collected by the water district, were sent to an out-of-state recycling firm. Arienti said local officials plan to seek a grant from the State Planning Office to expand the program in the future.

The Maine Hospital Association is gearing up to lead a statewide trade-in program, but it would begin on a limited basis.

“We’re looking at setting a goal of virtually eliminating mercury from the hospital,” said MHA spokesman James Harnar. “In addition, we’re thinking of doing a statewide thermometer exchange during calendar year 2001.”

Harnar said the initial drive probably would be limited to hospital employees in the first year. After that, he said, it may be expanded to include others.

According to Harnar, Maine’s 39 hospitals employ upward of 25,000 people. “Doing a kind of focused swap of thermometers through [hospital] employees would be a really good first step for this kind of project,” he said.