Scientists Discover Surprisingly High Levels Of Mercury In Arctic Ice & Snow

[hatrack]

The shimmering ice crystals spread across the Arctic landscape may look beautiful, but new research reveals that they carry an ugly secret: They contain surprisingly high concentrations of mercury, even when mercury is almost totally absent in the atmosphere. The researchers who made the discovery hope their findings will encourage stricter standards on mercury emissions that drift north.
The form of mercury that emanates from smokestacks of incinerators and power plants is relatively benign in the air. But after falling to the ground, it is converted by bacteria into methylmercury, a highly toxic compound that tends to work its way up the food chain. Few people were worried that this might be a problem in the Arctic, because sunlight was expected to break down mercury particles trapped in surface ice. Recent research had shown, however, that the deadly metal was lingering in Arctic ice, leaving scientists puzzled about where it was coming from or how it was accumulating.

To answer this, a group of U. S. scientists took surface samples from nearly 300 sites around Point Barrow, Alaska, and from kites they flew above gaps in the Arctic sea ice off the Alaskan coast. What they found alarmed them: In some places, mercury concentrations exceeded levels recorded near coal-burning plants. And the amounts evaporating from the seawater exceeded what had been recorded as falling from precipitation by as much as a factor of 10.

In the 1 March issue of Environmental Science & Technology, the team concludes that most of the methylmercury in Arctic ice comes from water vapor that’s evaporating from the ocean through openings in the sea ice, not from precipitation. They know this, geologist and co-author Joel Blum of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, said in an e-mail, because they also condensed out mercury from vapors collected from open ocean waters. As far as the ultimate sources of the mercury, Blum says they remain unknown. Despite that mystery, says Blum, "The only significant solution would be to reduce global mercury emissions."

EDIT

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/225/1

[Warpy]

1. Coal fired power plants in China

are coming online at the rate of two or three a week. Don't look for a reduction in atmospheric mercury any time soon. Even if the west manages to convert to renewable energy, the poorer Chinese will need to keep pumping out that coal fired power for some time to come.

[phantom power]

2. but there *will* be a big reduction in ice and snow!

problem solved!

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Ding ding ding ding ding...

...We have a winner!

[Nihil]

3. Maybe it's lack of coffee but that sounds really worrying?

> They know this, ... because they also condensed out mercury from vapors
> collected from open ocean waters.

:wow:

I thought that marine mercury "needed" to be concentrated by going up
the food chain not that it was measurably present in "normal" water vapour
above the ocean. Maybe I haven't engaged all of my brain yet but doesn't
that suggest the scale of the problem is far larger than previously stated?