WSJ-Mercury rules designed for safety end up polluting

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FYI http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06110/683738-113.stm Mercury rules designed for safety end up polluting Thursday, April 20, 2006 By J. Fialka, The Wall Street Journal CHELSEA, Maine -- One day this winter, Miville reached under the hood of a battered, 1995 Ford pickup and yanked out a switch. Inside was a bullet-sized capsule that he tossed into a white plastic pail labeled "Hazardous Waste." Thunk. Mr. Miville, who takes apart cars for an auto-parts dealer, was helping Maine implement one of the nation's toughest mercury-recycling laws. The capsule contained a BB-sized piece of the liquid metal, one of the world's most toxic pollutants. Maine's law is supposed to keep it out of the

state's air and waters by pulling it from old cars before they go to the smelter. "I just know it's poison," says Mr. Miville. What Mr. Miville doesn't know is that it might end up polluting Maine anyway. Unexpectedly, one big reason is the state's recycling law. Instead of being permanently removed from the environment, recycled American mercury frequently travels through a secretive and unregulated chain of processors and brokers that can often end with primitive African, Asian and Latin American gold mines. These operations make up one of the world's biggest markets for mercury. They're also one of the world's biggest sources of mercury pollution. In the northern Brazil town of Creporizao, miners buy flasks of recycled mercury from stores along the town's dusty street. Later, they use it to extract gold from the gravelly soil. The process sends the metal into the atmosphere where it can orbit the world as many as four times before

settling in distant places, such as Maine's seemingly protected lakes. "Certainly that's not where we want to see it end up," says , who runs the mercury-recycling program for Maine's Department of Environmental Protection. "It's one thing to get this out of U.S. commerce, but where it ends up is another issue," he says. A consensus has emerged in recent years -- among business leaders, scientists, and state policy makers -- that mercury is hazardous and requires federal monitoring. Once it leaves the nation or state that regulates it, however, mercury can be traded around the world, sometimes by smugglers, and its toxic footprint doesn't respect national boundaries. As a carefully used liquid metal, mercury is relatively harmless. But it can become a danger if it enters the atmosphere through industrial emissions and falls into lakes and oceans. There, mercury is changed by bacteria into a form that accumulates in plants, then

fish, then in humans who eat the fish. Ingested in large enough doses, mercury can impair hearing, vision, balance, speech and muscular control, especially in small children. Mercury experts disagree about the level at which the metal becomes harmful. There is also continuing debate about how much of mercury found in fish comes from natural sources, such as volcanoes. What's clear is that the biggest man-made source of mercury pollution is power-plant emissions, especially from rapidly industrializing countries such as India and China, which contribute about half the 3,000 tons of mercury that humans send into the atmosphere annually. The Bush administration last year began implementing a program to reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent over the next two decades. The No. 2 source, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, is from gold mining in the developing world, which emits 1,000 tons of mercury into the air every year.

This mining is done in some 55 countries, mostly developing nations. United Nations researchers say a network of recyclers and brokers in the U.S. and other industrial countries is a key source for much of the mercury used in this process. Just how much goes from the U.S. to mining countries is unclear because there's no official global accounting of mercury trade. The Interior Department estimates the U.S. exported 278 tons of mercury in 2004 to countries such as Mexico, Vietnam, Peru and Brazil. E. , who tracks mercury trade for the Interior Department's U.S. Geological Survey, says that likely underestimates the total. Some big American metal mines produce mercury as a byproduct of gold, silver, copper and lead mining. (Mercury and gold are often found in the same places and the process of extracting the gold often releases the mercury, too.) These companies don't report that they subsequently sell the mercury because they don't

have to. Last year, the European Commission moved to ban the export of all mercury to developing countries, starting in 2011, citing its use in gold mining among other environmental hazards. The U.S. is taking more modest steps. The Environmental Protection Agency is crafting a voluntary "Roadmap for Mercury." The plan will call for the federal government to "discuss options" with the states and industry about how a national regulatory program on mercury trade might work. Absent more formal controls out of Washington, Maine and more than 20 other states are adopting their own limits. One way for a state to make sure its mercury doesn't enter the atmosphere is simply to store it. Maine tried that when it first enacted its law in 2002. The state signed a contract with Mercury Waste Solutions Inc., a Mankato, Minn., company, to store 84 tons from a defunct Maine chlorine plant. The mercury was placed in special stainless-steel containers

that were guarded and monitored. But Mercury Waste Solutions became convinced it wasn't safe or prudent to store mercury because of the fear of terrorist attacks, says its chairman, Brad J. Buscher. Mr. Buscher says he sold the mercury to brokers in 2005 after an insurance broker told him it was uninsurable. Since then, Maine has enforced a recycling program that requires scrap dealers to remove mercury from cars and industrial equipment before metal is sent to the smelter. The long process begins with people like Mr. Miville, who recover the mercury from industrial scrap. The hazardous waste pail at Aable Auto Parts, Mr. Miville's employer, was picked up by Wesco Distribution Inc., a Pittsburgh-based company that collects and consolidates mercury-laden scrap. It removes the sealed buckets from Maine's junkyards. "We don't even open them up," says Jim Baines, a Wesco account representative. Wesco sells the buckets to an Illinois-based

company, Veolia ES Technical Solutions, which begins the purification process. Shaver, a manager for Veolia, says the company removes the mercury from a variety of industrial scrap collected from state-sponsored programs in Maine, Michigan, New Jersey and Arkansas. The mercury is then boiled in a big, closed pot called a retort and is turned into a gas. Then it's condensed back into its natural, liquid-metal form. Mr. Shaver says his company produces about 20 tons of mercury a year and sells it to D.F. Goldsmith Chemical and Metal Corp., of ton, Ill., which continues the purification, bringing the metal to the stage where it meets industry standards for reuse. Companies likely to put mercury in a product these days include electronic-equipment manufacturers and companies that make material for dental fillings. Car makers stopped putting mercury in switches in 2003. Mercury, a good conductor of electricity, was used among other things to operate

courtesy lights; tilting the hood or the trunk lid caused a tiny BB of mercury to roll inside the switch, making a connection that turned the light on. Goldsmith distills it three more times, then pours the mercury into industry standard, gray metal flasks that are roughly the size of large bowling pins. Because mercury is so heavy, they weigh 76 pounds when filled. Once the process of converting the old mercury into a reusable form is completed, there are few rules for monitoring the flasks, and the trail grows murky. D.F. Goldsmith executives won't say much about where they sell their mercury. Rob Goldsmith, president of the company, says he tries to resell to industrial users he knows in the U.S., but adds that he can't say for sure that some of it doesn't end up in countries such as Brazil. International metals brokers, or traders, scoop up varieties of materials -- not just mercury, but so-called "minor metals" such as antimony,

cobalt, and bismuth -- and sell them to markets in the developing world. "As far as I can tell there are no brokers involved, but there might be" further down the sales chain, says Mr. Goldsmith. "Mercury is mercury. Where it winds up is very difficult to trace." He declined to discuss the business further. Bruce J. Lawrence, president of Bethlehem Apparatus Co., of Hellertown, Pa., competes with Mr. Goldsmith. He also gets mercury from state recycling programs and says he sells frequently to brokers. One of Mr. Lawrence's most important customers is Harold Masters, managing director of a London-based company called Lambert Metals International Ltd. Mr. Masters says that after he buys mercury from Mr. Lawrence and other U.S. recyclers, he stores it in warehouses in places like Rotterdam, Holland, and Antwerp, Belgium. Then he says he ships it to customers all over the world, including a fair amount to Brazil, where he has an

agent. Mr. Masters wouldn't identify his customers or his agent. The broker-sold flasks often wind up in warehouses near Rio de Janeiro or Sao o, say industry sources. The Interior Department's Mr. says other common destinations are Vietnam and Indonesia. In Brazil, mercury importers are required to have a document showing that the product has a guaranteed industrial or medical customer, according to Brazil's Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, a government agency. The rules bar the use of mercury in primitive forms of gold mining, the agency says. WSJ(4/20)Mercury Rules Designed For Safety End Up -2- According to the agency, more than a third of the mercury is sent to companies that say it will be used to make dental fillings. Marcello M. Veiga, chief advisor to the United Nations Development Programme on mercury, says he recently bought a vial of mercury in a pharmacy in ina, Brazil, a small

town near a gold-mining area in the state of Bahia. "There were no questions asked," he says. In 1994, five years after the Brazilian government imposed the documentation requirement, the Brazilian Institute of Economic and Social Analysis, a nongovernmental, human-rights organization, issued a study concluding that mercury imported for legal purposes "is resold, informally, without any control. It is mostly destined for use in the gold fields." That's just regulated imports. U.N., Brazilian and U.S. government officials believe there's a separate channel of mercury that flows into the Amazon from smugglers who carry it over the border. The same routes are used to smuggle gold out of the country to avoid taxes. According to official estimates, Brazil imported 43 metric tons of mercury last year. Victor Zveibil, an official of Brazil's Ministry of Environment, estimates the Amazon region suffers from pollution that would likely have been produced by

130 tons of mercury a year, triple the amount that's legally imported. "We have such big borders and so many garimpos (primitive gold miners) that we know our national police cannot exactly control this," says Mr. Zveibil, the ministry's secretary of environmental quality. Brazil is working with police in neighboring countries to find new ways to curb smuggling, he says. The price of gold has more than doubled in the past five years. As a result, at least 15 million people in the world have turned to small-scale gold mining, a business that was almost dormant 50 years ago. Much of the activity is in developing countries where mining is unregulated and environmental restrictions are nil. In some regions, gold mining is the only source of income. The miners run small-scale operations in the jungles employing the same method for refining gold that's been used for over 2,000 years. The U.N.'s Mr. Veiga says the largest active gold-mining

area in the world is the northern jungles of the Amazon, covering Brazil and Venezuela, where thousands of camps mine gravel from streams and pits and extract the gold. The key ingredient is mercury. The standard process is to pound gold-bearing minerals into dust and then shovel it into a slurry of water that runs over copper plates coated with mercury. Because mercury has a strong attraction to metals, it sticks to the plates and traps the gold particles, forming a paste-like amalgam that is 40 percent mercury and 60 percent gold. The next step is called "roasting the gold" or burning a shovel full of the amalgam, which releases the mercury into the atmosphere and increases the gold content of the remaining mixture. Mr. Veiga, who has seen the process, says it usually comes at the end of the day. Gold miners, often including women and children, "stay around and watch the burning." To further refine the gold, the process is repeated

inside gold-buying shops, which are supposed to use filters to contain the mercury vapor. "None of them seems to work properly," said a study released in 2004 by Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology. So Mr. Miville's BB, which was initially recycled in Maine, might wind up in a place like Creporizao in northern Brazil. From the air, its tiny, dirt airstrip appears as an orange gash in what looks like the endless, empty green carpet of the Brazilian Amazon. "It may look as though no one is here," says Ruari McKnight, chief executive officer of Serabi Mining PLC, "but there are 100,000 people out there." he adds. Mr. McKnight says his London-based company mines Brazilian gold using a more elaborate and costly process that doesn't rely on mercury. He estimates that over the past 20 years, primitive gold miners have produced between 200 and 400 tons of gold in the region, mainly by extracting it from soil bordering streams. People in

Creporizao react suspiciously to outsiders who ask questions about mercury. At a gold-mining camp in the jungle, Silva Araujo, 67 years old, spoke over the noise of his hammer mill, a machine driven by a sputtering diesel engine. It pounded gravel into dust. Mr. Araujo complained about the rising price of diesel oil. Asked about the rising price of mercury, Mr. Araujo said he no longer uses it. "We separate out the gold using gravity," he said improbably. Baptista Bezerra, who runs a gold-buying store in town, said miners now heat the mercury mixture in a closed retort, which means they can use it over again and cut down on the fumes. "People are worried about the price and their health," he said. Yet two doors down the street, the owner of one of the town's handful of mining-supply stores reached behind his counter and produced a standard, gray, 76-pound mercury flask. He and another store owner buy the flasks and retail the

mercury to miners in small vials containing 100 to 200 grams, he explained, speaking in a soft voice. He asked that his name not be used. "This is forbidden," he said, pointing to the flask. The Ministry of Science and Technology report found that gold-shop workers and miners had dangerously high levels of mercury in their urine. They also found symptoms of mercury poisoning ranging from dizziness, tremors, insomnia and nausea to "sexual dysfunction" and "character alteration." Brazilian scientists also found high levels of mercury in the soil, plants and fish near gold-mining camps. Farmers in the area often clear pastures of weeds by setting fire to them, which gives the mercury a second chance to travel up into the atmosphere. P. Hurley, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, has spent two decades studying rising mercury levels in remote lakes in the northern U.S., trying to figure how this happens in pristine areas with no

industrial pollution. Late last year he visited Brazil and watched gold miners sitting on a hill, torching the mercury amalgam. He now thinks the mining process could be behind what he's observing in the U.S. "That hill was taller than any smokestack you'll see," says Dr. Hurley. He estimates that an amount of mercury as small as a BB is toxic enough to taint the fish in a U.S. lake.

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