Monitoring the Response to Changing Mercury
Because advisories have been posted for so many water bodies against consumption of fish with elevated concentrations of potentially dangerous methylmercury (MeHg), regulations limiting mercury emissions have been promulgated in many countries or are likely to be put forward in the near future (1–5). Yet, many questions about the environmental benefits of emissions reductions remain unanswered. Current computer models and other assessment tools provide widely divergent estimates for the effectiveness of emissions controls at reducing MeHg levels in fish (6–8). In addition, no broad-scale data sets are available to test model predictions. Some intensive studies and syntheses of regional databases have been conducted, but their overall applicability to different ecosystems or at the continental scale is uncertain. The problem is that the terrestrial–aquatic mercury cycle is complex, with many nonlinear processes that link atmospheric mercury emissions and MeHg bioaccumulation in fish and wildlife (7; Figure 1). As a result, how effective emissions reductions will be in decreasing biotic MeHg levels in freshwater, estuarine, and coastal ecosystems is not clear. Thus, any changes in the MeHg levels in aquatic ecosystems, particularly in fish and wildlife populations, should be documented and compared with reductions in mercury emissions and deposition. Although a significant effort has been made over the past decade to understand the causal link between mercury emissions and MeHg bioaccumulation into aquatic food chains, currently no coherent monitoring or assessment framework exists that can quantitatively document the temporal environmental changes in mercury levels across ecosystems. Clearly, it is crucial for scientists and policy makers to develop a monitoring framework that can accurately evaluate the effectiveness of current and pending regulation. This paper proposes such a framework.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-99ID-13727
- OSTI ID:
- 912319
- Report Number(s):
- INEEL/JOU-04-02578; TRN: US200801%%757
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Science & Technology A-Page Magazine, Vol. 39, Issue 1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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