U.N. deal on cutting mercury emissions?

Article: U.N. clinches global deal on cutting mercury emissions

The treaty will require countries with coal-fired power plants such as India and China to install filters and scrubbers on new plants and to commit to reducing emissions from existing operations to prevent mercury from coal reaching the atmosphere.

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The deal also includes measures to reduce mercury use in small-scale gold mining, although stopped short of an all-out ban. Gold prices near $1,700 a tonne have spurred the use of mercury as a catalyst to separate gold from its ore.

This sounds promissing. However, it will take at least three years to take effect.


Some parts of agreement will take even more. Phasing out products that use mercury will take seven years:

The legally-binding agreement aims to phase out many products that use the toxic liquid metal such as batteries, thermometers and some fluorescent lamps, through banning global import and exports by 2020.

Time interval of seven years makes me doubt in a success of the agreement.


Following is an interesting highlight:

Countries failed to agree on including vaccines where mercury is sometimes used as a preservative.

I can only guess which countries disagreed on this one.


Interestingly enough, article mentiones how mercury makes it's way to people trough Fish aswell, as a food source contaminated by mercury:

As mercury, also known as quicksilver, is released to the air or washed into rivers and oceans, it spreads worldwide, and builds up in humans mostly through consumption of fish. The brains of foetuses and infants are particularly vulnerable to damage from mercury.

We all knew that for a long time. At least something is being done regarding mercury; But the fact that it takes them seven long years to ban products containing heavy metals is unaccaptable. How hard is it to ban a few product(s). Interest for profit is high in this one; more valuable than human health in this case, obviously.
Anyway. I'd like to hear your thoughts on all this.

I am just glad that something is being done about mercury now .....

But I view it with a bit of sadness too, I can remember playing with mercury, even heating and evaporating it as a kid. Heck, all my experiments with mercury might explain why many people view me as weird. Mercury was a great toy for kids with an interest in science, but so was building bombs, and other explosives too, lol....

Of course, I also remember going to the farm as a kid, through this major asbestos producing area, and picking up asbestos-fluffs stuck in the bushes and everywhere, and weaving cloths from the asbestos fluff.

On the other hand, I can't but feel sad that more and more things are being taken out of reach of kids, things that might get them interested in science, like chemistry sets with which you can actually make things go bang, with digital radio, that kids won't be able to build a simple crystal set and listen to local AM radio stations, etc, etc .....

reply to post by Hellhound604


I'm not sure what do you mean. Who is taking chemistry sets away from children? Maybe you're talking about the schooling system. Well I don't know about that, We had chemistry and ran some experiments in our elementary school, so i can't complain about that.

What you said about mercury and how you played with it was a bit sad and funny at the same time. Innocent child playing with toxic substances. Where did you even get mercury? Did your parents knew you were playing with it?