About those mercury free fish before coal plants...
Of course that particular study is making the point that about 1/2 of the environmental Mercury was there PRIOR to your lifetime, BUT their motivation is to show that the problem is WORSE because YOU SHOULD NOTIGNORE the accumulated amounts PRIOR to the Industrial Revolution..
Seems like the argument I've made that Plutonium may have a 1/2 life, but mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are "forever"..
Legacy mercury levels in fish, environment will persist for centuries -- Earth Changes -- Sott.net
Surface reservoirs, such as soil, air and water, hold an enormous amount of mercury from past pollution going back thousands of years. Scientists believe it will continue to persist in the ocean and accumulate in fish for decades to centuries.
"It's easier said than done, but we're advocating for aggressive reductions, and sooner rather than later," says Helen Amos, a PhD candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Amos worked with a team of researchers from the the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) to collect historical data concerning mercury emissions as far back as 2,000 BC. The team has also been building environmental models of mercury cycling that captures the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and land.
People have long assumed mercury pollution began with the Industrial Revolution. The truth is humans have been releasing mercury into the environment for thousands of years. Prior studies found mercury stored in peat in Europe and layers of sediment at the bottoms of lakes in South America, as well as use by ancient Greeks and Chinese as pigments. Posts of quicksilver have been found in tombs dating back to 2000 BC; and as early as 1900 BC, the Assyrians are presumed to have used quicksilver and cinnabar (the bright red ore in which mercury naturally occurs). Spanish colonists in Central and South America used mercury to extract silver in 1570 AD, while 300 years later mercury was used in the California gold rush.
"Today, more than half of mercury emissions come from Asia, but historically the US and Europe were major emitters," says Daniel J. Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Harvard SEAS and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "We find that half of mercury pollution in the present surface ocean comes from emissions prior to 1950, and as a result the contribution from the US and Europe is comparable to that from Asia."
Of course that particular study is making the point that about 1/2 of the environmental Mercury was there PRIOR to your lifetime, BUT their motivation is to show that the problem is WORSE because YOU SHOULD NOTIGNORE the accumulated amounts PRIOR to the Industrial Revolution..
Seems like the argument I've made that Plutonium may have a 1/2 life, but mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are "forever"..
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