Trends in Anthropogenic Mercury Emissions in China from 1995 to 2003

Abstract

We have developed multiple-year inventories of anthropogenic mercury emissions in China for 1995 through 2003. We estimate that total Hg emissions from all anthropogenic sources increased at an average annual rate of 2.9% during the period 1995-2003, reaching 696 (+/- 307) t in 2003, with a speciation split of 395 t of Hg0, 230 t of Hg2+, and 70 t of Hg(p). Nonferrous metals smelting and coal combustion continue to be the two leading mercury sources in China, as nonferrous metals production and coal consumption keep increasing. Nonferrous metals smelting and coal combustion together contributed approximately 80% of total Hg emissions during the past decade. Hg emissions from coal combustion increased from 202 t in 1995 to 257 t in 2003 at an average annual rate of 3.0%. Among all of the coal consumption sectors, the power sector is the leading one in Hg emissions growth, up by 5.9% annually. Hg emissions from nonferrous metals smelting increased from 230 t in 1995 to 321 t in 2003 at an average annual rate of 4.2%. Although Hg emissions related to gold smelting decreased since 1996, other nonferrous metals such as zinc, lead, and copper contributed significant Hg growth at annual rates of 8.5%, 13.0%, and 6.9%, respectively. At provincial level, the trends of Hg emissions show significant variation. The uncertainty level decreased from +/- 78% (95% confidence interval) in the estimate of total emissions in 1995, to +/- 44% in 2003. This is primarily attributed to the decreased emissions from those Hg sources with the largest uncertainty in both activity levels and emission factors, such as artisanal gold smelting, mercury mining, and battery/fluorescent lamp production.

Spatial distribution of mercury in topsoil from five regions of China

“…Almost all the 11 categories and 59 sub-categories of emission sources defined by the UNEP Toolkit for Identification and Quantification of Mercury Release (UNEP 2010) are present in China. Although there is still a large uncertainty, the amount of Hg emitted from China was estimated in the range of 600-700 tonnes/year (Pacyna et al 2006;Wu et al 2006), accounting for about 30 % of the global emission. However, the fate of these emitted Hg was little studied and is not clear until now.…”

Distribution of mercury in coastal marine sediments of China: Sources and transport

“…The anthropogenic Hg emission of China is the largest in the world owing to its rapid industrialization and urbanization in the last several decades, taking up approximately 30% of the global Hg emission (Pacyna et al, 2010;Wu et al, 2006). In the next few decades, anthropogenic Hg emission in China will still be likely to increase because of the continuously increasing coal consumption and nonferrous metal production Maxson, 2009;Wang et al, 2011).…”

Mercury risk from fluorescent lamps in China: Current status and future perspective

“…Some of the mercury is removed from the flue gas by the air pollution control devices (APCDs) installed at coal-fire power plants. Over 95% of China's coal-fired power plants are equipped with electrostatic precipitators (Wu et al, 2006), which are not effective at removing elemental mercury. Fig.…”