Surprise! More Than Twice As Much Mercury In Environment As Thought

sciencehabit writes The most comprehensive estimate of mercury released into the environment is putting a new spotlight on the potent neurotoxin. By accounting for mercury in consumer products, such as thermostats, and released by industrial processes, the calculations more than double previous tallies of the amount of mercury that has entered the environment since 1850. The analysis also reveals a previously unknown spike in mercury emissions during the 1970s, caused largely by the use of mercury in latex paint.

Comments

Re:Broken light bulbs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole issue makes me mad as a hatter.

mercury in CFLs is a net good

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit of calculation will show that CFLs are likely to save more mercury by decreasing the amount of coal burned, even if you smashed each one on the ground at the end of life. A huge fraction of anthropogenic environmental mercury comes from burning coal. Overall, they are almost certainly a net reduction in anthropogenic mercury. I don't think they're great, but they are a reasonable stop-gap solution until LEDs take over.

Re:And don't forget mercury in the CFLs...

[MrL0G1C]

Except CFLs are regulated to have less than 2.5mg of mercury in and some will no doubt have a lot less.

CFLs prevent more mercury from being released into the environment via coal than they release:
How much Mercury is in Compact Fluorescent ( CFL ) bulbs , watch ...

Of course LEDs are better, do you have an argument against those?

Back when Moby Dick was a minnow ...

[CaptainDork]

... ca. 1953, my daddy worked in a oil refinery and he'd bring home small sample bottles full of mercury.

We puzzled at it, amazed at how heavy the bottle was and stuff. We poured some in our hands and rolled it around.

Then we coated dimes and pennies with it to make them look like silver and played with those.

Fast-forward 25 years and I'm an instrument man in an oil refinery lab and I'm calibrating a pneumatic gauge with a manometer that uses lots of mercury and I get a case of the dumbass and blow mercury all the way to the ceiling, all over counter tops and on the flour.

They evacuated the entire lab and sent in the hazmat team and stuff.

It's funny how things change with education and I never experienced any fallout from the big white letter E on my keyboard with the bluetooth that clasps to the ballpoint pen of my mother's daisy.

Re: Broken light bulbs.

[PopeRatzo]

The neurological effects of mercury were not understood hundreds of years ago, nor did people understand that burning coal emitted it. So their behavior was out of ignorance. We know far more today, so China's emissions are not as excusable

The long term negative economic and health effects of coal have been known about in the US for at least a few decades, and besides some cosmetic changes and this public relations "scrubbers!" effort, we haven't done a thing about it. In fact , our government has done everything it can do hide the fact that people are being poisoned across generations with mercury, because so many energy execs and owners, including certain coal-country billionaire siblings are big contributors, for and against politicians.

Instead, senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on children's health and the environment. As the EPA readied the report for completion in May 2002, the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) began a lengthy review of the document. In February 2003, after nine months of delay by the White House, a frustrated EPA official leaked the draft report to the Wall Street Journal, including its finding that eight percent of women between the ages of 16 and 49 have mercury levels in the blood that could lead to reduced IQ and motor skills in their offspring.[3]

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/mercury-emissions.html