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Toxics Link, Basel Action Network and Greenpeace said the highly toxic mercury stockpile was recovered from HoltraChem, a Maine-based chlorine-caustic factory. D.F. Goldsmith and Metal Corp, an Illinois-based trader, has purchased the stockpile, allegedly for shipment to a secret recipient in India.

Companies and government agencies in the US have refused to take on the stockpile because of the severe environmental liabilities and potential environmental risks associated with storing the metal, which is a deadly nerve poison.

Following protests by Maine-based non-government organisations, the Governor of Maine also approached the US Government to protest the export.

He suggested that it instead be added US Department of defense's existing stockpile.

However, the US Government has refused to accept the mercury stockpile claiming they lack authority to do so.

"The United States government is complicit in this act of poisoning the poor for profit. It is deplorable that we are preparing to send to India is a highly toxic substance that we do not want to live with in the United States," said Lisa Finaldi, Greenpeace USA's Toxics campaigner.

"Even as we phase out this toxic metal from our products and lives in the United States, we shamelessly export it to industrializing countries knowing fully well the magnitude of damage to human lives and environment it can cause in these countries."

Many US cities, states and hospitals, including Boston, San Francisco, and New Hampshire, are phasing out mercury thermometers as a first step towards eliminating the possibility of mercury leaking into the environment.

In September, ll leading retailers and manufacturers, including Walmart, Kmart Corporation and Meijer's Supermarkets, also announced that they would terminate sales of mercury thermometers.

"Likewise in India, this import can preempt fledgling attempts by Indian groups to frame rules to handle existing mercury contamination and to find alternatives to mercury," said Basel Action network spokesperson Ravi Agarwal in New Delhi.

Over the last few years, Greenpeace, Basel Action Network and Toxics Link have highlighted numerous instances of toxic trade, hazardous waste dumping and the export of dirty, obsolete products or technologies by industrialized countries into India.

The activist groups have raised the matter with the US Embassy and the Government of India, and have alerted the trade unions, including the dock workers and the Maine Governor Angus King for their efforts to sensitize the US Government on this latest instance of "toxic trade."

"We have had enough of this "take-this" US imperialism, where unwanted and dangerous substances, technologies and wastes are routinely dumped on industrializing countries," said Madhumita Dutta, an activist with New Delhi-based Toxics Link.

"India must refuse the import of this horribly toxic and persistent poison, and instead begin to work on policies that phase out our own sue of the toxic metal at home