Mercury Pollution Global Agreements

Mercury Pollution Global Agreements

November 2007 
 The soaring price of gold may 
be increasing mercury pollution locally and worldwide. The poisonous heavy 
metal is used to extract gold from ore in many artisanal mining operations 
which involve millions of workers and their families. 
Experts also worry that the increased burning of coal, which naturally 
contains mercury, is causing the toxic to be released into the air and 
spread around the globe. 
In the human body, mercury damages the central nervous system, thyroid, 
kidneys, lungs, immune system, eyes, gums, and skin. Damage done by 
mercury that has reached the brain cannot be reversed. There is no known 
safe exposure level for elemental mercury in humans, and effects can be 
seen even at very low levels. 
These issues are the focus of the first meeting of a new United Nations 
working group taking place this week in Bangkok. 
 
Governments and experts, industry and civil society groups are meeting 
under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme's Chemicals Branch to 
discuss how best to reduce environmental sources of mercury. 
A range of options from voluntary measures and initiatives up to legally 
binding treaties is on the table. 
Thai Secretary of Natural Resources and Environment Saksit Tridech 
welcomed delegates Monday, saying that due to its bioaccumulatative and 
persistent nature, mercury is becoming a serious global concern. 
Governments need to accelerate the effort to deliver an international 
agreement on mercury, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN 
Environment Programme, UNEP. 
Steiner said scientists have been warning about the dangers to human 
health, wildlife and the wider environment for more than a century. But 
still, every person alive today is thought to have at least trace levels 
of the heavy metal in their tissues. 
Mercury is linked with a wide range of health effects including 
irreversible damage to the human nervous system including the brain and 
scientists have concluded there is no safe limit when it comes to mercury 
exposure. 
It is true that many countries have, in recent decades, taken steps to 
reduce mercury uses and releases and to protect their citizens from 
exposure to this toxic heavy metal. However, the fact remains that a 
comprehensive and decisive response to the global challenge of mercury is 
not in place and this needs to be urgently addressed," said Steiner. 
"There is no real reason to wait on many of the mercury fronts. Viable 
alternatives exist for virtually all products containing mercury and 
industrial processes using mercury," he said. 
UNEP is urging governments, working with industry and civil society, to 
begin setting "clear and ambitious targets" to get global mercury levels 
down and to set the stage for mercury-free products and processes 
worldwide. 
Such targets might result in an agreement to phase out mercury from 
products and processes, such as in the manufacture of medical equipment 
and in chlorine factories, with an aim of realizing mercury-free products 
by 2020. 
Targets would allow reductions in emissions from coal-fired power stations 
with the additional benefits of reduced greenhouse gases and improved 
local air quality, UNEP says. 

The UN Industrial and Development Organization has a goal to cut by 50 
percent the use of mercury in artisanal mining by 2017 en route to a total 
phase out. 
A UNEP report, the Global Environment Outlook-4, issued last month, states 
that that coal burning and waste incineration account for about 70 per 
cent of the total quantified emissions of mercury. 
"As combustion of fossil fuels is increasing, mercury emissions can be 
expected to increase, in the absence of control technologies or 
prevention," says the report, the peer reviewed work of more than 1,000 
scientists and experts. 
Scientists also are testing suggestions that climate change may be 
triggering releases of new and re-activation of old deposits of mercury as 
a result of rising lake temperatures; erosion and the accelerated melting 
of permafrost, ice sheets and icebergs at the poles. 
From here the mercury - in form of methymercury - can enter the global 
food chain via marine mammals such as whales and seals and internationally 
caught and traded fish such as swordfish, shark, marlin, mackerel, 
walleye, sea bass and tuna. 
The report of the Bangkok working group meeting will be presented to 
environment ministers meeting in February in Monaco at UNEP's Governing 
Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum. 
A second working group meeting is planned for late 2008. 
Steiner hopes that at this second meeting, "the international community 
can finally bring closure to the debate about the way forward and open a 
new chapter of clear, decisive, action on mercury-action that leads to the 
setting of clear and ambitious targets in order to deliver measurable 
reductions to protect human health and the wider environment." 

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