'Integrating Knowledge to Inform Mercury Policy'

On the final day of the first negotiating meeting of the UNEP INC, 11 June 2010, it has been announced that the new instrument currently under construction with the explicit aim and reducing or eliminating global use of mercury has been named the Minamata Convention.

Dr John Holmes presented IKIMP’s ‘Decision Making Framework’ for redundant elemental mercury at the UNEP International Negotiating Committee 1 meeting in Stockholm recently. Currently the member states are meeting in Stockholm to begin the negotiation of a legally binding instrument to limit the global use of mercury.

Scientists at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology have found that the acceptable critical upper limit for mercury in soils is just 0.13 parts per million.  The critical limit was defined at five per cent, which means that 95 per cent of the organisms will be unaffected by 0.13 microgrammes of mercury per gram of soil.

New studies on mercury in US fish

Gold mining without mercury

Canadian residents demand action on mercury in water

Effects of very low levels of methylmercury on Arctic mamals

Following the 9th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP) in China in June 2009, a special issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics is being released on Atmospheric mercury.  Discussion papers are available to view here. Special issues of Applied Geochemistry  (on Mercury in contaminated sites) and Water Air and Soil Pollution (Focus on biogeochemistry of mercury in the environment) are also planned.

All in one mercury removal (25 March 2010, link to Highlights in Chemical Technology)

Finding and removing mercury from environmental waters could soon be accomplished with an ‘all-in-one’ magnetic microsphere developed by Chinese scientists.   Shengyang Tao, from the Dalian University of Technology, and colleagues have created a nanocomposite microsphere that can detect, adsorb and remove mercury from water. Wang et al (2010)

The little blue pills that sent Abraham Lincoln into a rage (22 March 2010, link to Royal Society of Chemistry press release)

The Blue Mass pills taken as antidepressants by Abraham Lincoln contained dangerously high levels of mercury likely to have caused his notoriously wild temper, scientists have found.  Researchers who analysed a recently unearthed sample of the medicine discovered it contained up to 120 times the acceptable daily intake of mercury . 

• Mercury isotopes reveal more about sources of mercury to fish in the open Ocean [Senn et al (2010)]
• Agricultural wetlands may be an important hotspot for methlymercury bioaccumulation [ Ackerman and Eagles-Smith (2010)]
• Sources of Mercury Exposure for U.S. Seafood Consumers: 
Implications for Policy [Selin et al. (2009)]
• Mercury contamination of tuna in the Pacific Ocean, why its likely to worsen [Sunderland et al (2009)]
• Global warming may result in higher mercury levels in Arctic seals [Gaden et al (2009)]
• Study reveals new mercury risks for fish and birds [Eagles-Smith and Ackerman (2009)]
• The availability of mercury in streams and how it makes its way into fish and other life-forms [ ES&T Environmental news, 2009]

  

The MEC7 conference originally planned to be hosted at Oxford University is now likely to be held in Edinburgh. Owing to a number of complicating factors it was decided that this would be more feasible and currently a late May/mid-June 2010 date is being investigated. For further information please contact Lesley Sloss.