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Minamata Convention on Mercury: What it is and what was discussed at the last conference
The fifth Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention concluded on November 3 in Geneva. An international treaty to protect human health and the environment from exposure to and release of mercury.
Minamata is a city in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. A disease was discovered here in 1956 – known as “Minamata disease” – which affected the central nervous system and caused paresthesia of the hands and feet, hearing and vision damage, difficulty in word articulation and even mental disorders, coma and death. There was a chemical industry in the city, Chisso, which had begun producing acetaldehyde using a mercury catalyst in 1932. From the start of production until 1968, the factory had continued to discharge large amounts of wastewater into the sea that was contaminated with methylmercury, a highly toxic compound that accumulated in molluscs, crustaceans and fish in Shiranui Bay and the Shiranui Sea and into the reached the food chain and caused poisoning of the local population. More than 2,000 people were contaminated with mercury and most died from poisoning. A human and ecological catastrophe that “slumbered” for decades.
Mining quarries, archive image
It was only at the beginning of the new millennium, precisely in 2007, that discussions began about the need for a legal instrument to address the threats posed by the use and extraction of mercury. These discussions led to the drafting of the Minamata Convention on Mercury in October 2013, which did not officially enter into force until August 2017. The aim of the convention is to regulate the use of mercury in industrial products and processes and to establish measures to reduce it. and eliminate emissions and emissions.
THEMercury is a heavy metaloccurs naturally in some rocks and in the earth’s crust, but as can be seen it can be fatal to animals and humans when released into the environment. Releases into air and water occur both through weathering of mercury-containing rocks and through human activities. The first reason for the release is the extraction of gold from mines, followed by the burning of coal by industry. This is followed by cement production and waste disposal. Through these processes, mercury not only poses a direct danger to workers, but also enters the atmosphere and is deposited on the sun, where it is washed away by water and enters the aquifer, waterways and the sea. Here it accumulates in the organisms that populate it, especially in fish and molluscs, thus entering the food chain and contaminating not only the species that eat these fish, but also the humans themselves who catch them.
In 2013 actually The Minamata Convention on Mercury and governments have committed to eliminating its use worldwide. But ten years later, mercury is still a problem around the world. For example, in the report “Mercury in Europe’s environment: A priority for European and global action” published by the European Environment Agency in 2018, we read that current levels of mercury in the atmosphere are up to 500% higher than natural levels. while in the oceans the mercury concentration is about 200% higher. Therefore, it is necessary to take action, and quickly.
During this fifth conference, negotiators reached an agreement to update the phase-out dates for certain types of batteries, switches and relays, fluorescent lamps and cosmetics and to phase out mercury as a catalyst in polyurethane production by 2025. However, there are efforts to address the elimination of dental amalgam, particularly in African countries where it is commonly used for fillings. Thresholds for the export of mercury waste were then decided: countries now have a fixed standard for measuring whether imports and exports contaminated with mercury contain more than the total permitted concentration value of 15 mg/kg. This sets an international standard for deciding whether a shipment should be blocked and prevents some developing countries from becoming global dumping grounds for mercury-contaminated waste.
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