With backing from 9 members of Michigan'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 9 Michigan 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 9 members of the Michigan 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.
We need your help to make sure they don't get away with these votes for dirty air. 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 9 Michigan members of Congress who put political campaign contributions ahead of the health of children in the Wolverine state: Dan Benisek, MI-1, Bill Huizenga, MI-2, Justin Amash, MI-3, Dave Camp, MI-4, Fred Upton, MI-6, Tim Walberg, MI-7, Mike Rogers, MI-8, Candice S. Rogers, MI-10 and Thaddeus G. McCotter, MI-11.
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