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This book provides a comprehensive overview of the different dynamic patterns involved in the redistribution of mercury in the global environment, and its impact on human health and ecosystems. Increasing mercury usage and the lack of emission control policy, especially in fast developing countries, represent a complex environmental and political issue that can only benefit from more accurate measurement.

Mercury is among our most serious health and environmental hazards and man-made emissions of mercury result in human exposure, directly and via fish consumption. As an input to global considerations on mercury management, we present a mercury substitution priority working list, or: An identification of the least essential mercury uses. Our assessment indicates that: Many mercury uses may today be readily eliminated, if politically desired. Global mercury demand may be reduced significantly by substitution of the least essential uses. Applying a prioritized phase-out list may help focusing on the main problems, securing a cost effective phase-out process. We therefore recommend that a prioritised phase-out work list for intentional mercury uses is discussed and developed further in international cooperation, for example in the Open-ended Working Group considering legal and other initiatives on mercury established under the auspices of UNEP. The list could serve as: A valuable tool in mutual communication and discussion of possible global mercury reductions A tool for a step-wise reduction development, if desired politically A part of forming a common vision for global mercury reduction.

AbstractThe number of atmospheric mercury (Hg) monitoring stations is growing globally. However, there are still many regions and locations where Hg monitoring is limited or non-existent. Expansion of the atmospheric Hg monitoring network could be facilitated by the use of cost-effective monitoring methods. As such, biomonitoring and passive monitoring offer a unique alternative to well-established monitoring by active measurements, since they do not require a power supply and require minimal workload to operate. The use of biomonitoring (lichens and mosses) and passive air samplers (PASs) (various designs with synthetic materials) has been reported in the literature, and comparisons with active measurement methods have also been made. However, these studies compared either biomonitoring or PASs (not both) to only one type of active measurement. In our work, we used transplanted (7 sampling sites) and in situ lichens (8 sampling sites) for biomonitoring, two PASs from different producers (3 sampling sites), and two different active measurement types (continuous and discontinuous active measurements, 1 and 8 sampling sites, respectively) to evaluate their effectiveness as monitoring methods. In the 9-month sampling campaign, 3 sampling locations with different characteristics (unpolluted, vicinity of a cement plant, and vicinity of a former Hg mine) were used. The results obtained with lichens and PASs clearly distinguished between sampling locations with different Hg concentrations; using both PASs and lichens together increased the confidence of our observations. The present work shows that biomonitoring and passive sampling can be effectively used to identify areas with elevated atmospheric Hg concentrations. The same can be said for discontinuous active measurements; however, the discrepancy between atmospheric Hg concentrations derived from PASs and discontinuous active measurements should be further investigated in the future.
Graphical Abstract