With backing from 14 members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, the US House yesterday approved a dangerous bill that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s clean-air safeguards to reduce toxic pollution from cement plants.
Who loses? Fetuses, babies and young children. Who wins? The 14 Pennsylvania members of Congress who are larding their campaign treasuries with dirty energy political contributions.
House bill 2681, the "Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act of 2011" would repeal updates to Clean Air Act standards to reduce toxic emissions from cement plants – one of the biggest sources of mercury pollution in the US. It’s a “Fetal Poison Bill” because mercury exposure can cause serious brain damage to fetuses, babies and young children.
We should be protecting them from mercury pollution, not exposing them to more of it. But a majority of the US House saw fit to gut the very standards that would reduce mercury pollution by 92 percent and cut emissions of hydrochloric acid by 97 percent from most of the nation’s nearly 100 cement plants.
The 14 members of the Pennsylvania delegation who voted for this fetal poison bill are listed below. As it happens, these Representatives have taken over $2.5 million from the polluters that stand to gain from blocking these kinds of clean air safeguards.
Unfortunately, this vote isn’t getting that much attention, and we need your help to make sure it doesn’t stay a dirty secret. Help us expose their votes by visiting www.dirtysecrets.org which makes it easy to share this info with your friends and learn more about the issue.
Here are the 14 Pennsylvania members of Congress who put political campaign contributions ahead of the health of children in the Keystone State: Mike Kelly, PA-3, Jason Altmire, PA-4, Glenn Thompson, PA-5, Jim Gerlach, PA-6, Patrick Meehan, PA-7, Michael Fitzpatrick, PA-8, William Shuster, PA-9, Thomas Marino, PA-10, Lou Barletta, PA-11, Mark Critz, PA-12, Charles W. Dent, PA-15, Joseph R. Pitts, PA-16, Timothy F. Murphy, PA-18 and Todd Russell Platts, PA-19.
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