Anniversary of Global Treaty to Protect Human Health and the Environment from Anthropogenic Emissions and Releases of Mercury and Mercury Compounds

A global response to a global problem | Video from UN Environment. 

Mercury has a long environmental shelf life and a global pathway, as it cycles between the atmosphere, the ocean and land.

This is why the international community chose a global response strategy to tackle the mercury problem throughout its entire life cycle.

The Minamata Convention limits mercury mining, regulates trade, reduces the use of mercury in products and processes, decreases and eliminates the use of mercury in gold mining, controls mercury emissions into the air and water, and promotes sound waste disposal.

In May 2017, 50 countries had ratified the Convention. Today, the number of parties to the Convention has doubled, reaching 95, and many more countries are pledging their political and financial support to help reduce and eliminate the use of mercury and mercury compounds.

The Minamata Convention is named after the city of Minamata in Japan, where local communities were poisoned by mercury-tainted industrial wastewater in the late 1950s and suffered crippling, untreatable and stigmatizing effects.

Through the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the global community remembers the many lives already lost to mercury poisoning and commits to preventing similar catastrophes.

*SOURCE: UN Environment. Go to ORIGINAL. 

2018 Human Wrongs Watch