Arctic Mercury Releases Inventory

Arctic Mercury Releases Inventory

2 Introduction

2.1 Background
2.2 Objectives and preparation
     2.2.1 Objectives of the ACAP mercury project
     2.2.2 Questionnaire on mercury releases, wastes and uses
     2.2.3 Preparation of this report

2.1 Background

Mercury may be one of the best-documented hazardous substances utilised by man. Many of the world's countries have found the evidence of mercury's adverse effects substantial enough to take initiatives to guard against uncontrolled releases to the environment. International initiatives, however, may need to be strengthened in order to control the environmental effects of mercury.

Mercury is a bio-accumulated and toxic metal that is of concern for both human and the environment. Mercury accumulates in biota such as fish and marine animals. This is of particular concern for the health of indigenous people in the Arctic who are highly dependent on food from the marine food web. Mercury is a volatile compound and emissions within and outside the Arctic can be sources for input of mercury to the Arctic states. For a summary of mercury's adverse effects on human health and the environment, see the Global Mercury Assessment (UNEP, 2002).

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) reports emphases the need for more knowledge about the sources, transport, fate and behaviour in the Arctic. Despite this need for more information the AMAP reports concludes that actions should be taken to reduce the anthropogenic input of mercury to the Arctic environment. Although sources for mercury pollution of the Arctic are not well known and important sources might be located outside the region, it is likely that sources within the Arctic states contribute significantly to the input of mercury to the Arctic environment.

In terms of the ACAP criteria, the project is addressing a “common” (potential similarity in national problems) and “shared” problem (transboundary movement of heavy metals to the Arctic). The AMAP reports and other publications have drawn attention to the potential severity of mercury contamination in the Arctic and the linkages to sources within the Arctic as well as distant sources. There are clear and established concerns for human health, and this ACAP Mercury project is aimed at facilitating controls on mercury releases to the environment from Arctic countries.

2.2 Objectives and preparation

2.2.1 Objectives of the ACAP mercury project

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to reduce the atmospheric Mercury releases from Arctic states.

The specific objective of the project is to identify important anthropogenic source categories for mercury emission within the Arctic region and to initiate cost effective reduction measures at one or a few specific sources or plants (in the Russian Federation) that could serve as pilot projects.

2.2.2 Questionnaire on mercury releases, wastes and uses

A questionnaire on mercury releases, uses and wastes was prepared by Denmark and was submitted to the Arctic Countries' for their response. The questionnaire was designed to highlight all possible release pathways individually for each source category; including releases to the atmosphere, aquatic environments (water), terrestrial environments (soil), deposition in general or sector specific deposits, and outputs to marketed (by-) products.

Though the atmospheric releases were in focus in the project, this was done because of a growing understanding that releases through other pathways may also be of significant importance, particularly in a longer time perspective. An important factor in the abatement of pollution with heavy metals and other highly persistent toxics is that once they are mobilised into the biosphere by humans, they are not degraded, but remain a threat to human health and the environment over long time spans. This is particularly the case for mercury, because of its potential to evaporate from wastes, land and materials, and thus be re-mobilised to potentially cause adverse impacts in the biosphere.

The questionnaire can be seen in the appendices with submitted national responses.

The mercury questionnaire was supplemented by a separate guideline for filling in the questionnaire. The guideline, or so-called introduction, gives additional definitions and advice on reporting national mercury releases into the questionnaire, in order to enhance comparability and transparency of the reported mercury data. The questionnaire introduction can be seen in the appendices to this report.

2.2.3 Preparation of this report

This report is part of the ACAP Mercury project. The objective of the report is to present and analyse compiled data on mercury releases from the Arctic countries, summarise existing initiatives to reduce mercury releases, and propose options for further release reductions.

This report has been prepared primarily on the basis of the Arctic countries' responses to the above mentioned questionnaire on mercury releases, uses and wastes.

It should be noted that the mentioned data from the Russian Federation were extracted from the report "Assessment of Mercury Releases from the Russian Federation", also prepared as part of this ACAP project by ACAP, 2004, because official response to the mercury questionnaire from the Russian Federation has not yet been received.

In addition, relevant information from various other recent national and international compilations and studies has been included in the report preparation.

This document presents mercury data that for some countries have been newly updated, partly inspired by - and prepared for the needs of - this study. For other countries, the submitted mercury data have been prepared and reported in other, previous inventories. The data are analysed here in the light of the possibilities for comparison that a very detailed and specific data call allows, and in the perspective of the similarities, and in some cases clear differences, between the Arctic countries. All in all, the Arctic countries have explored virtually all options for mercury release reductions during the last three decades or more. There is a solid basis for mutual inspiration between them, and in a wider perspective, to other countries of the world. The release reduction options presented in this document are based on this common data base of experiences. This also implies that strategies or actions to pursue these options are already on the way in many of the countries.

The questionnaire methodology has provided a thorough basis for the responding countries to enhance comparability and transparency, and the countries have known that this has been of high priority. Naturally, however, the countries have used their available estimates as background data, and the methods for estimation of these existing data have been quite different. The same is likely the case with the handling of data uncertainty. Only one country reported information on quantitative uncertainty on individual data - see the national overviews in section 3.3 and the questionnaire responses in appendices. Thus, when comparing national release data, conclusions should be drawn with some caution.

Even though this report include perhaps some of the worlds best described countries as regards mercury flows and releases, it can not be ruled out that in some cases high reported mercury releases to some extend may reflect higher coverage of the release inventories made, rather than higher "true" values. One important factor may be whether releases from less well quantified sources are included (with high uncertainties) or simply not included in the inventories. For the figures presented in this report, an impression of possible significance of this factor can be made from studying the detailed reports given in the questionnaire responses in appendices to this report.

The term "reported" data is used in this report to distinguish the available, reported data, from the "true" values of the data. This also includes the aspect that some releases may actually take place, but are not estimated or reported. Though this problem is inherent in all data inventories, it is often an important distinction for mercury, and one which is sometimes not mentioned in existing inventories.

The numbers of significant digits in values presented in this report do not reflect the level of uncertainty on the presented values, except in cases where this has been incorporated by the countries themselves in their response to the mercury questionnaire.