The SIM F&GP committee members strongly support the Russell Scientific Instruments objections to the new directive 2007/51/EC Council 76/769/EEC restricting the marketing of certain devices containing mercury. The attached letter from the managing director requests interested persons to add their names to the petition as indicated.
The committee asks the members of WCSIM to add their names to this petition as a matter of urgency.
Russell Scientific Instruments Limited Rash’s Green industrial Estate, Dereham, Norfolk NRI9 IJG
Directive 2007/51/EC, Council Directive 76/769/EEC restrictionson marketing of certain devices containing mercury.
One of my staff who is passionate about her and her colleagues jobs and keeping a traditional craft alive, has set up a petition to get the UK government to try and save our specialist company. We have manufactured and repaired instruments containing mercury for the last 150 years but due to ill-informed EU bureaucrats, laws are being passed to stop us. Our skills are used worldwide and our glassblower is possibly the last one with stocks of glass and the expertise to blow an accurate replacement, working thermometer to an existing scale. Who will be left with expertise to handle and repair mercury based instruments if we are stopped? All we ask you to do is click onto this hyperlink,
register with the UK government at No 10 and put your name to our petition. If we can get 900 names by the end of next week, the government might listen to us and fight our case against the bureaucrats of Brussels. Surely the government is fighting to save jobs and not increasing the unemployment figures!
Our products are needed worldwide whether they are in temperature measurement to 0.01°C, barometric pressure to 0.1 millibar or engine saving capsize switches for the RNLI. The mercury we use is all from recycled sources and we also offer a service to take in mercury to prevent it from being dumped in landfill. Now however, the powers that be, want to stop us but on the other hand they are asking all of us to change from ordinary light bulbs to new “low energy” version which contain mercury vapour! Do they warn you of this on the packaging and that you should dispose of them at your nearest recycling centre when they stop working or get broken!? NO!
All they say in their publicity is that electricity costs are lower. Who is the biggest user of mercury in the EU? The chlor-alkali production (industrial users and power stations)! To give you an example, we use 200 kg per year, the C-A and light bulb sources 200 tonnes per year. The last thing we all want to be doing is stacking shelves in supermarkets with low energy light bulbs.
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The SIM F&GP committee members strongly support the Russell Scientific Instruments objections to the new directive 2007/51/EC Council 76/769/EEC restricting the marketing of certain devices containing mercury. The attached letter from the managing director requests interested persons to add their names to the petition as indicated.