Recent and planned EPA actions will greatly reduce releases of mercury to the environment and mercury exposures. Early in 1998, EPA will release, for public input, a draft comprehensive Action Plan describing EPA's continuing effort to reduce mercury pollution. The same amount of mercury has existed on the planet since the Earth was formed.
Mercury moves through the environment as a result of both natural and human activities.
The human activities that are most responsible for causing mercury to enter the environment are burning mercury-containing fuels and materials and industrial processes. These activities produce emissions to the air that contain mercury. Mercury is transported through the air and deposited to water and land where humans and wild life are exposed. Based on the Mercury Study's emissions inventory, the highest emitters of mercury to the air include coal burning electric utilities, municipal waste combustors, commercial and industrial boilers, medical waste incinerators, chlor-alkali plants, hazardous waste combustors, and cement manufacturers. Mercury also can contaminate land and water when it is directly released in industrial waste waters, or when waste containing batteries and other sources of mercury are disposed of.