The atmosphere is an important reservoir for mercury pollution, and understanding of oxidation processes is essential to elucidating the fate of atmospheric mercury. Several recent studies have shown that a low bias exists in a widely applied method for atmospheric oxidized mercury measurements. We developed an automated, permeation tube-based calibrator for elemental and oxidized mercury, and we integrated this calibrator with atmospheric mercury instrumentation (Tekran 2537/1130/1135 speciation systems) in Reno, Nevada and at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, U.S.A. While the calibrator has limitations, it was able to routinely inject stable amounts of HgCl and HgBr into atmospheric mercury measurement systems over periods of several months. In Reno, recovery of injected mercury compounds as gaseous oxidized mercury (as opposed to elemental mercury) decreased with increasing specific humidity, as has been shown in other studies, although this trend was not observed at Mauna Loa, likely due to differences in atmospheric chemistry at the two locations. Recovery of injected mercury compounds as oxidized mercury was greater in Mauna Loa than in Reno, and greater still for a cation-exchange membrane-based measurement system. These results show that routine calibration of atmospheric oxidized mercury measurements is both feasible and necessary.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b04211 | DOI Listing |
Sci Adv
January 2025
School of Chemistry, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Mercury (Hg) is a global pollutant with substantial risks to human and ecosystem health. By upward transport in tropical regions, mercury enters into the stratosphere, but the contribution of the stratosphere to global mercury dispersion and deposition remains unknown. We find that between 5 and 50% (passing through the 400-kelvin isentropic surface and tropopause, respectively) of the mercury mass deposited on Earth's surface is chemically processed in the lower stratosphere.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxics
December 2024
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
In this study, gaseous element mercury (GEM) and gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) in the atmosphere were continuously observed at a minute resolution from 1 April 2019 to 31 December 2020 in urban Xi'an, the largest central city in Northwestern China. The concentrations of GEM and GOM drastically fluctuated within the ranges of 0.022-297 ng/m and 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnal Chem
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry and Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metal Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Gansu, Lanzhou 730000, China.
J Colloid Interface Sci
December 2024
Key Laboratory of Groundwater Resources and Environment (Jilin University), Ministry of Education, College of New Energy and Environment, Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China. Electronic address:
As the frontier of environmental catalysis, mercury removal by deNO unit over bifunctional catalyst has emerged. However, it is fundamentally challenging to achieve simultaneous NO and mercury removal in industrial flue gas due to the commercial selective catalytic reduction (SCR) molecular sieves' lack of demercuration active centers. Herein, we demonstrate an active site in situ reconfiguration approach to enhance the oxidation of elemental mercury and immobilize divalent mercury by modified commercial SCR catalysts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Technol
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550082, P. R. China.
Rice leaves can assimilate atmospheric mercury (Hg), which is accumulated by grains and causes health risks to rice consumers. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying Hg assimilation in rice leaves remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated catalase's (CAT) function in Hg oxidation within rice leaves, as well as the Hg speciation and transcriptomic profiles of rice leaves exposed to Hg.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!