ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-10-5951-2010 Global mercury emissions to the atmosphere from anthropogenic and natural sources Pirrone N. 1 Cinnirella S. 1 Feng X. 2 Finkelman R. B. 3 Friedli H. R. 4 Leaner J. 5 Mason R. 6 Mukherjee A. B. 7 Stracher G. B. 8 Streets D. G. 9 Telmer K. 10 CNR-Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research - Division of Rende, Rende, Italy State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, China University of Texas, Dallas, USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, USA CSIR, Stellenbosch, South Africa Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Hartford, USA Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Division of Science and Mathematics, East Georgia College, Swainsboro, Georgia Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, USA School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada 02 07 2010 10 13 5951 5964 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/5951/2010/acp-10-5951-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/5951/2010/acp-10-5951-2010.pdf

This paper provides an up-to-date assessment of global mercury emissions from anthropogenic and natural sources. On an annual basis, natural sources account for 5207 Mg of mercury released to the global atmosphere, including the contribution from re-emission processes, which are emissions of previously deposited mercury originating from anthropogenic and natural sources, and primary emissions from natural reservoirs. Anthropogenic sources, which include a large number of industrial point sources, are estimated to account for 2320 Mg of mercury emitted annually. The major contributions are from fossil-fuel fired power plants (810 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>), artisanal small scale gold mining (400 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>), non-ferrous metals manufacturing (310 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>), cement production (236 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>), waste disposal (187 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>) and caustic soda production (163 Mg yr<sup>−1</sup>). Therefore, our current estimate of global mercury emissions suggests that the overall contribution from natural sources (primary emissions + re-emissions) and anthropogenic sources is nearly 7527 Mg per year, the uncertainty associated with these estimates are related to the typology of emission sources and source regions.

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