Mercury around the World...

[bloom]

While there certainly are environmental practices/living habits we could emulate from the Europeans just as China could - Since much of the manufacturing pollution has been shifted out of the EU/USA to China, etc.- where will China be able to shift it? - for one thing. And besides as far as our "shifting goes" - it comes back here anyway....

European environmental protection way worth learning from

Along with the continually warming up of touring abroad in recent years, more and more prospering Chinese people have got chances to appreciate the conditions and customs of the European continent....

As a matter of fact, Europe is a region that was the first to enter an industrialized society, the Europeans have experienced to the full the serious consequences of heavy industry and heavy pollution. London, once known as a "foggy capital", as well as some movie pictures of Charlie Chaplin fully showed the then vigorous scene of industrialization and savage development.

Nowadays, Europe has completely discarded pollution-causing industries and, with science and technology as the pillar, has spent a lot of money on environmental protection and given the mandate that commodities of other countries can enter the European market only when they meet its specified requirements.

http://english.people.com.cn/200510/09/eng20051009_213462.html

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INVISIBLE EXPORT A HIDDEN COST OF CHINA'S GROWTH

China is already believed to be the world's largest source of nonnatural emissions of mercury. Jozef Pacyna, director of the Center for Ecological Economics at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, calculates that China, largely because of its coal combustion, spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for nearly a quarter of the world's nonnatural emissions. And the volume is rising at a time when North American and European mercury pollution is dropping. The U.S. emitted about 120 tons of mercury into the air in 1999 from manmade sources. Chinese power plants currently under construction -- the majority fueled by coal -- will alone have more than twice the entire electricity-generating capacity of the U.K....

As for China's impact on surrounding countries, I'm first to admit the problem. But let's talk about this in the context of international fairness," he says, before firing rhetorical questions aimed at Washington "Whose development model are we emulating? Who has been shifting all of its pollution-heavy factories to China? . . . And who bears an even greater international responsibility than China -- but has yet to shoulder it -- on matters like greenhouse-gas emissions?"

http://www.evolutionary-economics.org/KSH-Postings-Econ/630.html

From the Global Village of Beijing (GVB) (Emissions up from previous article)

GVB has partnered with the United States EPA in their attempt to reduce global mercury emissions from coal and oil-fired power plants. While US power plants emit approximately 160 tons of mercury, China's yearly emissions exceed 1,000 tons.

http://www.gvbchina.org/EnglishWeb/MercuryCampaign.htm

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(Meanwhile - the mercury emissions from China and India are being used as an excuse NOT to reduce emissions at home...)

Plan to limit mercury pollution quashed for now

HELENA — The panel that sets Montana's environmental rules put the brakes Friday on a plan to make coal-burning power plants limit mercury pollution by 90 percent.

The Board of Environmental Review voted 4-1 against an idea submitted by a host of environmental, church and public health groups earlier this month that would have forced power plants to cut mercury beginning in 2011. Instead, the panel asked Department of Environmental Quality to come back in February with its own plans for limiting mercury at Montana's power plants.

The environmentalists' plan gave companies that could not meet a 90 percent reduction in mercury pollution an "out," where they wouldn't be punished as long as they worked with the state to continue reducing mercury.

Others, like Gail Charnley, a toxicologist with HealthRisk Strategies in Washington, D.C., testified that Montana already has very low concentrations of man-made mercury and what mercury is here mostly comes from power plants in China and India.

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/10/01/montana/a05100105_04.txt

[Ravenseye]

1. bloom you're little miss mercury aren't you?

It's insane though. At what point do we stop poisoning ourselves? At what point do we stop exploiting the rest of the world? Will it be too late?

[bloom]

2. I suppose

I just recently noticed what must be the plan by the current administration - to pretend that Mercury emissions from the US are not a problem because the emissions are supposedly so much less here than from other places.

Mercury has such a direct effect. It's not like other things are not a problem - but yeah - it is a focus for me. I wonder if the Montana people mentioned the study that found that people who lived near coal-burning plants were more likely to have autism.

"The main finding is that for every thousand pounds of environmentally released mercury, we saw a 17 percent increase in autism rates," she said in an interview...

The study looked at Texas county-by-county levels of mercury emissions recorded by the government and compared them to the rates of autism and special education services in 1,200 Texas school districts, Miller said.

"The study shows that there may be a very important connection between environmental exposure to mercury and the development of autism," she said in an interview.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0317-05.htm

These people that go in there and make their case about "risk assessments" - essentially ignoring all impacts to life - human and otherwise - must not have souls. They might as well be robots.

Like these people:

http://www.healthriskstrategies.com/

Little surprise that their site links to (Steve) Forbes Risk Management Forum.


Here's more bad news:

New coal plants bury 'Kyoto'

New greenhouse-gas emissions from China, India, and the US will swamp cuts from the Kyoto treaty.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1223/p01s04-sten.html

[bloom]

3. "The biogeochemical cycling of elemental mercury: Anthropogenic influences

Abstract

A review of the available information on global Hg cycling shows that the atmosphere and surface ocean are in rapid equilibrium; the evasion of Hg0 from the oceans is balanced by the total oceanic deposition of Hg(II) from the atmosphere. The mechanisms whereby reactive Hg species are reduced to volatile Hg0 in the oceans are poorly known, but reduction appears to be chiefly biological. The rapid equilibrium of the surface oceans and the atmosphere, coupled with the small Hg sedimentation in the oceans makes deposition on land the dominant sink for atmospheric Hg. About half of the anthropogenic emissions appear to enter the global atmospheric cycle while the other half is deposited locally, presumably due to the presence of reactive Hg in flue gases. We estimate that over the last century anthropogenic emissions have tripled the concentrations of Hg in the atmosphere and in the surface ocean. Thus, two-thirds of the present Hg fluxes (such are deposition on land and on the ocean) are directly or indirectly of anthropogenic origin. Elimination of the anthropogenic load in the ocean and atmosphere would take fifteen to twenty years after termination of all anthropogenic emissions.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V66-4887P6W-CX&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1994&_alid=323724495&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5806&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=44d2ce29de7ec37dd3bbac9977a73fe2