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An international team of researchers has conducted a new analysis that provides more accurate estimates of sources of mercury emissions around the world. Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated trajectory; even after it settles onto land and sinks into oceans, mercury can be re-emitted back into the atmosphere repeatedly.
This so-called “grasshopper effect” keeps the highly toxic substance circulating as “legacy emissions” that, combined with new smokestack emissions, can extend the environmental effects of mercury for decades. The team says this could help refine pollution-control strategies and give scientists a better idea of how long legacy emissions—mercury re-emitted by the land and ocean—stick around in the atmosphere.Image credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT
