UNEP Report Released: Mercury: Time to Act

This month, the United Nations Environment Programme released a report titled, Mercury: Time to Act (2013). The 44-page document available here,

 speaks directly to governments involved in development of the global treaty on mercury. It presents updates from the UNEP Global Mercury Assessment 2013 in short and punchy facts and figures backed by compelling graphics that provide governments and civil society with the rationale and the imperative to act on this notorious pollutant.

The report underlines the fact that mercury remains a major global, regional and national challenge in terms of threats to human health and the environment, especially but not uniquely to the health of pregnant woman and babies world-wide through the eating of contaminated fish for example or marine mammals in places like the Arctic.

UNEP Report Released: Global Mercury Assessment 2013: Sources, Emissions, Releases, and Environmental Transport

This month, the United Nations Environment Programme released a report titled, Global Mercury Assessment 2013: Sources, Emissions, Releases, and Environmental Transport (2013). The 44-page document available here,

presents sources of mercury emissions to air and water. It presents estimates of anthropogenic emissions to air from various sources based on data from 2010 and estimates for releases to aquatic environment. The report also presents the latest information on atmospheric and aquatic chemistry, fate and transport. It is an overall summary report for the policy makers based on a technical background report.

U.S. Geological Survey Report Released: Fluvial transport of mercury, organic carbon, suspended sediment, and selected major ions in contrasting stream basins in South Carolina and New York, October 2004 to September 2009

Today the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released a report, titled Fluvial transport of mercury, organic carbon, suspended sediment, and selected major ions in contrasting stream basins in South Carolina and New York, October 2004 to September 2009, Sci. Invest'n Rep. 2012-5173.  The 140 page report available here, authored by Celeste A. Journey et al., was conducted to provide

[a] spatially extensive assessment of the environmental controls on mercury transport and bioaccumulation in stream ecosystems in New York and South Carolina was conducted as part of the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment Program and included the determination of fluvial transport of mercury and associated constituents during water years 2005–2009. (A water year extends from October of one calendar year to September of the next calendar year.) In the Coastal Plain region of South Carolina, the study area included the Edisto River and its headwater tributary, McTier Creek. In the Adirondack region of New York, the study area included the upper Hudson River and its headwater tributary, Fishing Brook. Median concentrations of filtered total mercury rangedfrom 1.55 nanograms per liter (ng/L) at the Hudson River site to 2.77 ng/L at the Edisto River site. The Edisto River site had the greatest median filtered methylmercury concentration, at 0.32 ng/L, and the Hudson River site had the least median filtered methylmercury concentration, at 0.07 ng/L.

Clean Air Act: Preliminary Observations on the Effectiveness and Costs of Mercury Control Technologies at Coal-Fired Power Plants

This testimony by the Government Accountability Office (GAO-09-860T) dated July 9, 2009 explains that substantial mercury reductions using mercury control technology systems commercially and in tests were achieved with all three main types of coal and on boiler configurations that exist at nearly three-fourths of U.S. coal-fired power plants.