In new research published in a special issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and in "Sources to Seafood: Mercury Pollution in the Marine Environment" a companion report by the Dartmouth-led Coastal and Marine Mercury Ecosystem Research Collaborative (C-MERC), scientists report that mercury released into the air and then deposited into oceans contaminates seafood commonly eaten by people in the U.S. and globally.
Over the past century, mercury pollution in the surface ocean has more than doubled, as a result of past and present human activities such as coal burning, mining, and other industrial processes. The research findings by C-MERC published today also examine the effects of local mercury inputs that dominate some near-shore coastal waters.
C-MERC's research is presented through nine scientific papers in Environmental Health Perspectives and is the culmination of two years of work by approximately 70 mercury and marine scientists from multiple disciplines including biology, ecotoxicology, engineering, environmental geochemistry, and epidemiology. The research provides a synthesis of the science on the sources, fate, and human exposure to mercury in marine systems by tracing the pathways and transformation of mercury to methylmercury from sources to seafood to consumers.
Two other papers focusing on the health effects of methylmercury were published earlier this year in Environmental Health Perspectives. Methylmercury has long been known as a potent neurotoxicant, particularly as a result of acute and high level human exposures primarily through seafood consumption, but more recent research has revealed health effects at increasingly lower levels of exposure.
The companion report, "Sources to Seafood: Mercury Pollution in the Marine Environment," looks at the pathways and consequences of mercury pollution across marine systems by drawing on findings from the C-MERC papers, scient
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| Contact: Amy Olson Amy.D.Olson@dartmouth.edu 603-646-3274 Dartmouth College Source:Eurekalert |
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