Agreement Near on Mercury Switches in Scrap Cars
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(3/21/06) Continuing the effort to remove mercury switches from scrapped automobiles, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson today reaffirmed the commitment to complete negotiations on a collaborative agreement with industry, government and non-governmental groups.

Administrator Johnson said:

As many of you know, we have made significant progress toward developing a national partnership program that will help remove mercury switches from scrap automobiles. This national program will substantially reduce airborne mercury emissions from steel mills, and will do so much faster than EPA or states working on their own. The negotiating team includes representatives from the auto, steel, and recycling industries; state governments; environmental groups; and EPA. I want to thank them for a lot of hard work. They are actively working to hammer out the final details and seek agreement within their respective organizations. I fully anticipate we will have a national agreement in place within the coming weeks.

EPA's Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation is coordinating the negotiations.