Declines in anthropogenic mercury

Overview

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Key numbers

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• show that global emissions increased 330% during 1960–2021, with declines in
• Global South countries under a business-as-usual scenario could increase 10%-
• 50% global mercury emissions by 2030. Our findings demonstrate that global
• spheric Hg distribution and deposition16–18. For centuries, developed iod, ASGM’s share of total emissions increased by 26% (Fig. 1c), making
• Latin America, Asia, and Oceania, typically contrasted with the Global sectors. Stage II (1980–2000) was a period of stable emissions due to
• inventory offers several advantages: (1) consistent methods for esti- largest emission sector, our ASGM estimate is also within the range of
• atmosphere reached 2477 Mg in 2021 (–25% to 30%, interquartile countries only accounted for 19% of global emissions, with the Global
• range), a 3.3-fold increase from 1960 (Fig. 1a). Artisanal and small-scale North being the main emitter at that time (Fig. 3). We divided the globe
• Fig. 1 | Global anthropogenic Hg emissions to the atmosphere from 1960 for each sector is available in Supplementary Table 1. Detailed annual emissions for
• to 2021. a Global anthropogenic Hg emissions by sector from 1960 to 2021. each sector are available in Supplementary Table 2. The uncertainty of Hg emis-
• emissions. However, by 2021, this share had decreased to only 10% Although China has been the world’s largest emitter of anthro-
• fossil fuel combustion39, which alone accounts for a reduction of 134 (546–750 Mg, interquartile range), nine-fold greater than that in 1960
• Mg (Fig. 4), achieved through policies promoting renewable energy (Fig. 4). Subsequently, it began to decline, contributing to 75% of the
• sented for 1960 (a) and 2021 (b). The map is sourced from National Platform for Year Proportion (%)
• emissions after East Asia, with increases over the past 62 years of 400%,
• 200%, and 700% respectively (Fig. 4). In these regions, ASGM accounts
• for up to 70% of the recent increase in Hg emissions, with the country experienced the fastest Hg emissions growth worldwide, rising by 1200%
• those areas, with changes over the past 62 years of –32%, 1300%, and
• 540%, respectively (Fig. 4). In Latin America, emissions from non- Implications for global mercury pollution and emission
• fallen to 29% of 1960 levels by 2021, thanks to a reduction in large-scale efforts made by the Global North and China, these have been entirely
• Fig. 4 | Regional anthropogenic Hg emissions by sector from 1960 to 2021. emissions of Hg by world region are available in Supplementary Table 3. The
• Carlo simulations ranges from –30% to 40% (interquartile range, oil refining, chlor-alkali production, and uncontrolled waste
• among emission sectors, contributing 62% of the total in 2021 (Sup- Biomass burning, newly introduced in the GMA 2018 inventory,
• like UNEP19. Other emission sectors also face limitations due to data on 16 types of biomass fuel emissions (Supplementary Table 1). ASGM
• emission factors (Supplementary Tables 4–6). The specific calculation detailed, long-term (1960–2021), high spatial resolution (0.1° × 0.1°)
• where m is the Hg species, k is the combination type of APCDs, F is the from relevant industry associations45 (Supplementary Table 8). For
• emission factors by varying the application rates of different APCDs 0.1° × 0.1° grid data45 (Supplementary Table 8). Notably, the PKU-FUEL
• assumed to be ±30%, 50%, 75%, and 100% based on data quality in 1. Mason, R. P. et al. Mercury biogeochemical cycling in the ocean and
• fit either a Weibull or a normal distribution (Supplementary Table 5). 4. Zhou, J., Obrist, D., Dastoor, A., Jiskra, M. & Ryjkov, A. Vegetation
• Carlo simulations generated probability distributions of annual atmosphere-land-ocean model: 40% more re-emissions buffer the
• or region, from 1960 to 2021. The interquartile range was used as an 6. Pirrone, N. et al. Global mercury emissions to the atmosphere from
• broad uncertainty range between the maximum and minimum predicted 9. Hammerschmidt, C. R., Fitzgerald, W. F., Lamborg, C. H., Balcom, P.
• 14. Lavoie, R. A., Bouffard, A., Maranger, R. & Amyot, M. Mercury 35. Horowitz, H. M., Jacob, D. J., Amos, H. M., Streets, D. G. & Sunder-
• 65. Qin, X., Guo, Q., Martens, P. & Krafft, T. Mercury stable isotopes combustion and cement production in China. Nature 524,

Methods (brief)

• atmospheric chemistry models5,18,21,31. They can help improve the sectors in this study were collected from the PKU-FUEL database. This

Implications

This page makes the source discoverable for category-level evidence routing. Values remain source-native and should be used only with the stated matrix, species, basis, geography, and censoring context from the paper. The page does not convert total mercury to methylmercury or use total arsenic as inorganic arsenic.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• Fish — marine, non-predatory (sardines, anchovies, salmon, cod)
• Mercury
• Mercury
• Aluminum

Verification notes

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Update history

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