Impact of mercury emissions from historic gold and silver mining: Global modeling |
| |
| Authors: | Sarah Strode Lyatt Jaeglé Noelle E Selin |
| |
| Institution: | 1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Box 351640, Seattle, WA 98195, USA;2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA;1. State Key Laboratory of Shale Oil and Gas Enrichment Mechanisms and Effective Development, SINOPEC Key Laboratory of Petroleum Accumulation Mechanisms (SKL-PAM) and Wuxi Institute of Petroleum Geology, Wuxi 214126, China;2. Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization and Sedimentary Minerals, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, Shandong 266590, China;3. Nanjing Hongchuang Exploration Technology Service Co. Ltd, Nanjing 211111, China;1. Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, 50 Ngamwongwan Rd., Latyao, Chatuchack, Bangkok 10900, Thailand;2. Materials Innovation Center, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, 50 Ngamwongwan Rd., Latyao, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand;1. Laboratory of Anthropogenic Systems Ecology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China;2. NAAM Group, Faculty of Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia;3. State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China;4. Department of New Energy Science and Engineering, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China |
| |
| Abstract: | We compare a global model of mercury to sediment core records to constrain mercury emissions from the 19th century North American gold and silver mining. We use information on gold and silver production, the ratio of mercury lost to precious metal produced, and the fraction of mercury lost to the atmosphere to calculate an a priory mining inventory for the 1870s, when the historical gold rush was at its highest. The resulting global mining emissions are 1630 Mg yr?1, consistent with previously published studies. Using this a priori estimate, we find that our 1880 simulation over-predicts the mercury deposition enhancements archived in lake sediment records. Reducing the mining emissions to 820 Mg yr?1 improves agreement with observations, and leads to a 30% enhancement in global deposition in 1880 compared to the pre-industrial period. For North America, where 83% of the mining emissions are located, deposition increases by 60%. While our lower emissions of atmospheric mercury leads to a smaller impact of the North American gold rush on global mercury deposition than previously estimated, it also implies that a larger fraction of the mercury used in extracting precious metals could have been directly lost to local soils and watersheds. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
