TY - JOUR
T1 - Total Mercury Released to the Environment by Human Activities
AU - Streets, David G.
AU - Horowitz, Hannah M.
AU - Jacob, Daniel J.
AU - Lu, Zifeng
AU - Levin, Leonard
AU - Ter Schure, Arnout F.H.
AU - Sunderland, Elsie M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Electric Power Research Institute under Contract No. 10004163 at Argonne National Laboratory and Contract No. 10005277 at Harvard University. Argonne National Laboratory is operated by UChicago Argonne, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2017/6/6
Y1 - 2017/6/6
N2 - We estimate that a cumulative total of 1540 (1060-2800) Gg (gigagrams, 109 grams or thousand tonnes) of mercury (Hg) have been released by human activities up to 2010, 73% of which was released after 1850. Of this liberated Hg, 470 Gg were emitted directly into the atmosphere, and 74% of the air emissions were elemental Hg. Cumulatively, about 1070 Gg were released to land and water bodies. Though annual releases of Hg have been relatively stable since 1880 at 8 ± 2 Gg, except for wartime, the distributions of those releases among source types, world regions, and environmental media have changed dramatically. Production of Hg accounts for 27% of cumulative Hg releases to the environment, followed by silver production (24%) and chemicals manufacturing (12%). North America (30%), Europe (27%), and Asia (16%) have experienced the largest releases. Biogeochemical modeling shows a 3.2-fold increase in the atmospheric burden relative to 1850 and a contemporary atmospheric reservoir of 4.57 Gg, both of which agree well with observational constraints. We find that approximately 40% (390 Gg) of the Hg discarded to land and water must be sequestered at contaminated sites to maintain consistency with recent declines in atmospheric Hg concentrations.
AB - We estimate that a cumulative total of 1540 (1060-2800) Gg (gigagrams, 109 grams or thousand tonnes) of mercury (Hg) have been released by human activities up to 2010, 73% of which was released after 1850. Of this liberated Hg, 470 Gg were emitted directly into the atmosphere, and 74% of the air emissions were elemental Hg. Cumulatively, about 1070 Gg were released to land and water bodies. Though annual releases of Hg have been relatively stable since 1880 at 8 ± 2 Gg, except for wartime, the distributions of those releases among source types, world regions, and environmental media have changed dramatically. Production of Hg accounts for 27% of cumulative Hg releases to the environment, followed by silver production (24%) and chemicals manufacturing (12%). North America (30%), Europe (27%), and Asia (16%) have experienced the largest releases. Biogeochemical modeling shows a 3.2-fold increase in the atmospheric burden relative to 1850 and a contemporary atmospheric reservoir of 4.57 Gg, both of which agree well with observational constraints. We find that approximately 40% (390 Gg) of the Hg discarded to land and water must be sequestered at contaminated sites to maintain consistency with recent declines in atmospheric Hg concentrations.
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.est.7b00451
DO - 10.1021/acs.est.7b00451
M3 - Article
C2 - 28448134
AN - SCOPUS:85020844962
SN - 0013-936X
VL - 51
SP - 5969
EP - 5977
JO - Environmental Science and Technology
JF - Environmental Science and Technology
IS - 11
ER -