Mercury never goes away. It just gets moved around, changing from one chemical form to another, with water playing a major role in both its transport and transformation. Once mercury is released into waterways, it can end up just about anywhere. Ocean currents can carry it around the world, it can evaporate into the atmosphere, and be deposited back into the oceans or onto land.
Water also plays an essential role in the transformation of metallic mercury into its far more dangerous form, methylmercury. The actual conversion is done by a wide range of different types of bacteria, all of which need a moist environment ranging from melting permafrost to fresh water streams and oceans.
Water isn’t the only route for mercury to get into humans. Mercury poisoning of gold miners in poor countries as a result of breathing in mercury vapour is a modern-day tragedy. However, it was the outbreak of Minamata disease in Japan in the 1950s that revealed mercury and water could be a lethal mix. Large amounts of methylmercury were released by a chemical plant and taken up by fish that were then eaten […]
Full article: The Effects Of Mercury On Water
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