Cheryl Hogue/C&EN
WILL TONS OF MERCURY now housed in eight U.S. chemical plants eventually get into the hands of poverty-stricken people panning for gold in developing countries and then into rivers and the air?
The U.S. government, led by the Environmental Protection Agency, is aware that the marketplace forces of supply and demand could make this scenario into a reality. With a goal of preventing that from happening, policy analysts now are studying how best to manage domestic stocks of the neurotoxic metal.
As a start, the government is examining national and worldwide supply and demand trends for mercury. These trends form a complicated web. It connects a handful of U.S. chemical plants, domestic recyclers that help prevent mercury pollution in the U.S., industrial gold mines in the U.S., Chinese production of a key plastic material, and impoverished communities in the developing world...
Chemical and Engineering News
Eight plants in the U.S. use mercury cells to produce chlorine gas and caustic soda. As they close, thousands of tons of the metal are expected to be recovered and sold on the world market.