Environmental Health News, Week 7: Mercury in Permafrost

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New research suggests that the world's largest reservoir of mercury is is the Northern Hemisphere. The amount is large enough to fill 23 Olympic sized swimming pools. This permafrost is found in Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and the Tibetan plateau of China. The mercury is naturally occurring, as it gets trapped beneath dead plants and soil that freeze into permafrost; however, it can be neurologically toxic to humans and animals in the form of methylmercury. This methylmercury can leach out of the soil or it may be eaten by microbes and pass up the food chain. This can pose a huge problem for those that rely on food sources, such as salmon from the Yukon river. It is said that the mercury is prominent in the Yukon River, which then led to a significant amount of mercury in the ocean. Climate change accelerates the process of permafrost thawing, thus allowing mercury into the environment at a much faster rate. This only adds to the list of problems that climate change has created.

Reference
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/permafrost-mercury-north-1.4562596

Comments

  1. Ashley SubramaniMarch 7, 2018 at 4:18 PM

    Hey Loren,

    We keeping seeing the impact that climate change is having. Although this is an issue that is seen without climate change, it is clearly being accelerated due to it. Is there anything being done to control the mercury?

    ReplyDelete

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