Experts mull global pact to cut mercury use
Date: 10-Sep-02
Country: SWITZERLAND
The meeting, organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), comes just a year after an international treaty was signed capping a similar effort over a decade on banning the use of persistent chemical pollutants, or POPS.
With mercury too, UNEP Chemicals Director Jim Willis told a news conference, "slowly but surely we have come to have a potentially significant global problem."
In a message to the meeting, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Topfer said mercury poisoning, which often comes through eating fish with high levels of the metal, had to be tackled promptly as a serious hazard to life and the environment.
Only last week, the United States Senate voted to ban the sale of mercury fever thermometers on the grounds that when broken or thrown away they were a source of serious environmental contamination.
Willis said the problem with the metal - which in water transforms into a toxic compound that is absorbed by humans, animals and fish - was that it was almost indestructible.
When put with other waste into landfills, it can slowly seep into groundwater - and from there into rivers, lakes and the sea - or evaporate into the air, especially if the waste is incinerated, UNEP experts say.
Produced naturally in rock, soil and volcanoes, its presence in the environment has been boosted some three times since the coming of the industrial age in the 18th century through coal burning, and the mining of non-ferrous metals and gold.
Widely used for decades in lamps, batteries and electrical equipment because it is an excellent conductor of heat, as well as in thermometers and dental fillings, it can cause permanent damage to the brain, nervous system and kidneys.
UNEP says it has also been used in some pesticides and pharmaceuticals, as well as in some skin-lightening creams.
In its evaporated form, mercury can travel for thousands of miles (kilometres), but accumulates in cold places - a phenomenon which has led to high contamination levels in Arctic regions, and especially among fish and animals there.
Willis told the news conference that this week's gathering, attended by around 150 experts representing governments and research centres, would be looking at how mercury's use in industrial processes and products could be cut back.
Some governments attending favoured the idea of working towards another treaty, while others were hesitant, he said. "But in any case, that would take years, and we need action as soon as possible," The UNEP expert added.
