Asia pumps out more mercury

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Science News - January 5, 2005

Asia pumps out more mercury than previously thought

Airborne concentrations of mercury traveling westward from Asia are

double previous best estimates, according to the first direct

measurements of these emissions, collected last summer on the island

of Okinawa by a team of U.S. and Japanese scientists. " These data

provide further evidence that we are way off in estimating the global

mercury cycle, " says chemist Steve Lindberg at the Oak Ridge National

Laboratory. " We keep finding new and bigger sources, but we think that

levels of elemental mercury in the atmosphere are not increasing.