Great Lakes Binational Toxics Strategy

Developing a Virtual Elimination Strategy for Mercury

This "options paper" describes a series of potential actions to reduce mercury use and release in the Great Lakes basin, set in the overall context of a new paradigm for mercury management.

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION
2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON MERCURY
   1. Lifecycle of Mercury
   2. Changes Needed in the Existing Framework for Mercury
3. OPTIONS TO REDUCE MERCURY
   1. Mercury Reduction Ideas
   2. New Paradigm for Mercury Management
4. MOVING FORWARD
   1. Implementing Action Items
   2. Supporting Activities in Other Forums
5. CONCLUSION
6. APPENDIX (43Kb)
7. End Notes

I. INTRODUCTION

The International Joint Commission (IJC), a bilateral advisory commission that monitors progress on implementation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, issued a challenge to the United States and Canada to "virtually eliminate" bioaccumulative and persistent toxic chemicals, including mercury, from the Great Lakes ecosystem. In response, EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) launched the "Virtual Elimination Project" to meet that challenge, focusing its initial efforts on mercury and PCBs. The phrase "Virtual Elimination" comes from a joint United States and Canadian policy statement that dedicates each nation to preventing releases of bioaccumulative toxicants to the Great Lakes. EPA developed the "Virtual Elimination" project to assess public policies and private practices pertaining to mercury and PCBs, and to invite ideas by stakeholders to reduce mercury and PCB releases. At an earlier stage of this project, EPA commissioned Ross and Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd., to produce detailed background papers that describe the sources, uses, and regulations for each chemical. ¹

In September 1994, EPA hosted a meeting for stakeholders in the region to share its initial findings on mercury and PCBs and to offer participants an opportunity to make recommendations on ways to reduce the use and release of each chemical². This paper discusses these reduction opportunities for mercury³. Mercury pollution is one of the most frequent triggers for fish consumption advisories across the United states and represents a widespread, indirect risk to human health via fish consumption. By looking holistically at both uses of mercury and regulations surrounding those uses, EPA hopes to identify cleaner, smarter, and cheaper ways to reduce mercury releases to the environment.

The paper incorporates meeting participants' observations and recommendations for reducing mercury into a strategy for reducing mercury use and release in the Great Lakes, and organizes those ideas according to the lifecycle of mercury use and release. What emerges is a new paradigm for mercury management, one that is built upon knowledge and responsibility: promoting knowledge of the impact of mercury on the environment, and promoting responsibility for reducing contributions to mercury releases across all sectors of society.

This "options paper" describes a series of potential actions to reduce mercury use and release in the Great Lakes basin, set in the overall context of this new paradigm for mercury management. Section II includes a brief overview of mercury sources and observations on the existing regulatory framework to provide some background for new readers. It also introduces the concept of the mercury "life cycle" to illustrate various ways to obtain reductions in mercury releases. Section III discusses specific options to reduce mercury, based on suggestions made by participants at the September 1994 virtual elimination meeting, as well as those made by EPA. A separate matrix includes a full menu of these recommendations. Section IV describes how to structure a mercury reduction strategy so that avoided costs will encourage pollution prevention. It also provides examples of how to link reduction ideas to the mercury lifecycle for different industries. Appendices A and B provide a detailed list of the mercury reduction ideas suggested by meeting participants.

As an "options" paper, it does not recommend a specific path of action for EPA. It is designed to catalogue ways to achieve bilateral virtual elimination goals, recognizing that EPA will evaluate where its involvement could be most useful.

II. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON MERCURY

Mercury is a naturally occurring metallic element and a potent neurotoxin. It is used extensively in many products and processes due to properties that enable it to conduct electricity, measure temperature and pressure, act as a pesticide and fungicide, and alloy with other metals. Many of the products we use in our everyday lives are made with mercury or contain a mercury component, including thermometers, thermostats, dental fillings, and fluorescent lights. Within the United States, manufacturers use 500 - 600 metric tons of mercury annually as part of their manufacturing processes or to create products that use mercury. Mercury is also released as an incidental by-product of numerous processes. As a natural element, mercury is released when raw materials are heated.

Scientists generally believe that atmospheric deposition is the largest pathway by which mercury enters surface waters. Mercury is released into the air through combustion, incineration, or manufacturing processes, and may eventually be deposited into lakes. An emissions inventory conducted for EPA's forthcoming Clean Air Act Mercury Study estimates that medical and municipal waste incinerators, coal-fired electric utilities, mercury cell chlor-alkali plants, primary copper and primary lead smelters, cement manufacturers, and secondary mercury production facilities are the sectors that emit the largest quantities of mercury to the atmosphere⁴. Because mercury emissions can travel over long distances, one State's -- or even one region's -- efforts alone may not adequately reduce air deposition of mercury. Long range atmospheric transport raises mercury concerns to a national, and even international, level.

At very small quantities, mercury is capable of impairing neurological development in fetuses and young children and damaging the central nervous system of adults. It does not degrade and is not destroyed by combustion. In addition, it persists in the environment and can bioaccumulate in the aquatic food chain.

Across the United States, 37 States -- including all of the Great Lakes States -- have issued fish consumption advisories for at least some of their waterbodies due to mercury contamination. In Minnesota, 94% of the lakes surveyed have mercury levels high enough to warrant fish consumption restrictions. As a result of the prevalence of fish consumption advisories and the high level of anthropogenic releases, EPA and many states have taken steps to reduce mercury emissions and "virtually eliminate" the anthropogenic contribution to mercury levels, as challenged to do so by the IJC.

A. Lifecycle of Mercury

Looking at the "lifecycle" of a substance -- from its original introduction into a product or process to its ultimate disposal -- offers an opportunity to focus reduction efforts early in the lifecycle where the cost of reducing use and release may be less than attempting to reduce releases after a waste is created. For the last several years, environmental agencies have encouraged facilities to prevent pollution at the source rather than rely solely on control measures. This approach applies readily to mercury. The pollution prevention principle is based on the strategic approach of not creating a waste or environmental release in the first place. Such a strategy can obviate the need for control equipment and avoid potential environmental impairment.

Five different stages describe the life cycle of mercury. These stages relate to those decisions to supply, design, manufacture, use, or dispose of a product containing mercury⁵. Table 1 shows these stages. Government programs and policies may influence choices at each stage to favor reductions in mercury use and release.

B. Changes Needed in the Existing Framework for Mercury

The existing regulatory framework for mercury contains both strengths and shortcomings for achieving mercury reductions. For example, mercury use in the United States has declined 63% since 1988 to 558 metric tons per year in 1993 from 1503 metric tons in 1988. However, the rate of decline has slowed since 1990. While certain industries, such as the battery industry, have made tremendous progress in reducing mercury use, many large sources of mercury releases are basically uncontrolled in the existing regulatory framework. The following observations identify, for each lifecycle stage, the gaps in the current structure that frustrate progress on virtual elimination, and identify the virtual elimination goals to overcome these barriers.

1. Intentional Use

Stage 1: Production / Supply. Mercury supply is largely unregulated. Mercury generally is not an expensive commodity as an input, and the ensuing environmental costs of mercury are not reflected in its price. Secondary mercury -- recycled mercury -- is providing an increasingly larger portion of the mercury supply in the United States. However, existing regulations may not encourage recycling to the extent necessary to further prevent releases.

Virtual Elimination goal: Minimize the need for primary production of mercury by encouraging mercury recycling.

Stage 2: Design. Product designers incorporate mercury into a product or process based on mercury's ability to perform desirable functions. However, they may not be aware of the ultimate environmental costs of its use or the potential public concerns about mercury. Few existing regulatory costs are linked directly to mercury use. Some states, most notably Minnesota, have taken a new approach to mercury regulation. Minnesota is looking at the lifecycle environmental impacts of mercury-containing products, and has begun to (1) restrict the types of products containing mercury that can be sold in the state, (2) require recycling programs, and (3) impose disposal restrictions on mercury-containing products.

Virtual Elimination goal: Increase awareness of the environmental implications of mercury and the environmental costs of using mercury.

Stage 3: Manufacture. Product manufacturers that choose to rely on processes that use and release mercury may not be aware of the full environmental costs associated with mercury. Federal regulations have not focused on regulating mercury uses, except in pesticides, fungicides, and paints. Instead, they have focused primarily on regulating some types of mercury releases. Many industrial and municipal mercury releases are not regulated because the existing thresholds that trigger regulation are too high to effectively regulate a chemical used in small quantities by many sources. Furthermore, because mercury may be combined with other wastes or emissions, it is difficult to isolate mercury and manage its release and disposal in an environmentally preferable manner.

Virtual Elimination goal: Reduce uncontrolled releases of mercury, and reward, through public recognition and/or distinct avoided costs, facilities that reduce or eliminate mercury use and release.

Stage 4: Purchase. Consumers or commercial buyers, knowingly or unknowingly purchase items that contain mercury or were made from a process that requires mercury. While these products may present no human health risks during use, they may contribute to mercury releases upon disposal. At a federal level, no information is collected on mercury users or mercury-containing products, which makes it difficult to identify the full range of items that may contain mercury. Purchasers may not be aware that a specific product contains mercury or that serious environmental damage may occur as a result of improper disposal.

Virtual Elimination goal. Educate the public and industrial consumers about mercury-containing products and processes so that they can make informed purchasing decisions.

Stage 5: Disposal. No disposal restrictions exist at a federal level for mercury-containing products. Mercury releases from incinerators or wastewater treatment plants occur only as a result of mercury-containing items present in the wastestream.

Virtual Elimination goal. Manage mercury disposal in a manner that makes source reduction an attractive option.

2. Incidental Releases

The lifecycle concept does not transfer readily to incidental releases of mercury because manufacturers and power generators that release mercury generally do not need or want the mercury for their activities. However, mercury releases from these sectors are among the largest sources mercury emissions⁶. Many major sources, including utilities, are currently unregulated for mercury emissions. Consumers are unlikely to be aware of the mercury-related environmental consequences of their use of electricity or consumption of final products made from processes that incidentally release mercury.

Virtual Elimination goal: Eliminate uncontrolled releases, encourage energy conservation, and seek alternatives to production processes that release mercury.

III. OPTIONS TO REDUCE MERCURY

To develop a menu of options that could achieve EPA's strategic objective of reducing the use and uncontrolled release of mercury, EPA considered these questions:

• Does the existing regulatory structure encourage ongoing reductions to achieve virtual elimination objectives and obtain mercury reductions beyond compliance?
• What changes might be necessary?
• What types of rewards or pressures might be appropriate to support these changes?
• At what point in the life cycle would rewards or pressures be most effective?

Although EPA did not seek consensus at its September 1994 meeting, most participants at the meeting essentially affirmed EPA's goal of reducing mercury use and release. They offered many recommendations for reducing mercury use and release to achieve virtual elimination of mercury, and added salient observations about the feasibility of many of these options. EPA will incorporate these ideas into a virtual elimination strategy for mercury. Many of these ideas parallel and complement efforts emerging in some of the Great Lakes States as public awareness of the mercury problem increases.

A. Mercury Reduction Ideas

A successful virtual elimination strategy for mercury will require a new paradigm for mercury management. This paradigm is based on knowledge and responsibility: knowledge of the environmental impacts of chemicals and wastes after a product is created, and a willingness to take responsibility to reduce mercury releases. Taken together, and spread out over the lifecycle of mercury's current supply, use, and disposal, it represents a relevant and comprehensive approach to virtually eliminating mercury releases.

Under this paradigm, five elements anchor a comprehensive mercury reduction strategy.

1. Increase public awareness of mercury problems and mercury-containing items.
2. Influence the supply of mercury to minimize primary production and manage federal holdings;
3. Minimize the use of mercury through pollution prevention and alternative technologies;
4. Reduce uncontrolled releases by encouraging recycling and regulating releases; and
5. Manage disposal of mercury-containing items and mercuric wastes.

Table 2 illustrates how these elements guide a comprehensive reduction strategy for mercury.

Specific actions will be necessary to accomplish each of these objectives. Examples of these action items are described below. Appendix A provides a list of potential actions, organized by the five elements of a virtual elimination strategy for mercury described above. For each action item, Appendix A identifies the lifecycle stages to which the action applies, the type of release(s) affected, and the intended audience. Section IV of this paper describes how to incorporate these action items into a comprehensive virtual elimination strategy.

Increase Awareness.
Increasing awareness builds upon the idea that an educated public is better positioned to understand the environmental implications of purchasing decisions. Many participants at the September meeting observed that there is a general need to educate the public, including individual consumers and industrial consumers and producers, about the environmental and public health consequences of mercury contamination, the types of items likely to contain mercury, and possible alternatives for those items. Specific actions to increase awareness include labeling products that contain mercury, developing public education programs, and expanding reporting programs to disclose mercury use and release.

Influence production/supply.
The relatively low price and ease of obtaining mercury may influence how readily it is used in products and processes. Influencing the mercury supply must address domestic and international sources of mercury, as well as secondary mercury so that secondary mercury provides an increasing percentage of the overall available mercury. Curtailing supplies from the National Defense Stockpile of mercury until a long term solution is established for this mercury provides one example of managing the mercury supply. The U.S. government, through its Departments of Defense and Energy, holds approximately 11 million pounds of surplus mercury that it has sold under annual Congressional authorizations. The Department of Defense suspended these sales in 1994 after EPA requested that it consider the environmental implications of these sales.

Decrease Use.
Decreasing mercury use and encouraging pollution prevention form the core of a mercury reduction strategy. Actions that will help decrease mercury use include incentives that inhibit mercury use so that mercury is less desirable as an input into products and processes, as well as regulations that directly restrict or prohibit non-essential mercury uses. Recommendations to decrease mercury use also include measures to develop and promote technological alternatives for mercury-containing products and processes.

Reduce Release.
When mercury uses cannot be prevented or eliminated, the releases should be reduced. Actions that could reduce releases include direct controls on sources currently unregulated for mercury release. Reducing mercury release also involves encouraging additional recycling in addition to regulating disposal.

Manage Disposal.
Several proposed action items involve options to manage the disposal of mercury more effectively. These action items affect both users and consumers of mercury-containing items who must dispose of their products, as well as the disposal facilities that receive discarded mercury items. Activities range from stringent controls on disposal facilities to disposal restrictions on mercury-containing items.

B. New Paradigm for Mercury Management

The reduction ideas described above, and in Appendix A, suggest that education and behavioral change must accompany technological advances if pollution prevention and virtual elimination are to be successful. Mercury users in all sectors of society must take responsibility for reducing their mercury releases so that anthropogenic mercury releases decline.

Under this new approach, the true cost of mercury use is not just its price as an input, which is often insignificant, but also includes the cost of mercury contamination in the environment. For instance, when a shoe manufacturer incorporated a mercury switch into tennis shoes so they would light up, the decision, which seemed appropriate from a cost and engineering standpoint, turned into a public relations nightmare. By educating the public and supporting activities that increase knowledge and responsibility for mercury management, EPA can prevent such situations from occurring in the future. In choosing areas to focus its efforts, EPA may want to concentrate on specific industries that use or release the largest quantities of mercury, or show the greatest technical opportunities for rapid replacement of mercury.

IV. MOVING FORWARD

This section describes a framework for implementing specific action items throughout the mercury lifecycle, and discusses the importance of supporting existing mercury reduction efforts as part of a virtual elimination strategy for mercury. Four major challenges confront government and industry efforts to reduce mercury in a "cleaner, smarter, cheaper" manner. First, it is clear that achieving virtual elimination will require more than regulation of mercury releases. Mercury use must be addressed in any comprehensive strategy to reduce mercury releases. This marks an important shift from the existing policy framework that focuses primarily on releases. Focusing on mercury use implies that reduction efforts should concentrate on the earlier stages of the lifecycle to prevent mercury releases upfront. Second, some currently uncontrolled sources of mercury should be reduced, especially where mercury is released incidentally or where use reduction is not immediately feasible. Third, EPA must consider carefully the cross-media implications of existing regulations, including RCRA rules, to ensure that removing mercury from one environmental media in the process of "disposal" does not merely transfer it to another media. Finally, society must begin to investigate a final repository for discarded and unneeded mercury, as its use is gradually eliminated from products and processes.

A. Implementing Action Items

EPA recognizes that it must pursue a multi-faceted approach that combines local efforts with national policies to achieve its virtual elimination objectives. It must ensure that an appropriate incentive structure exists to encourage a change in polluting activities and to reward those who reduce their use and release of mercury. Moving forward with virtual elimination will involve changes to the existing policy framework in the following areas:

1. Modifying existing regulations;
2. Influencing pending rule changes;
3. Developing new rules to ensure appropriate incentives for mercury reductions; and
4. Developing new voluntary programs that spur additional reductions.

At each point, the costs associated with new or revised mercury regulations or voluntary programs will generally (1) increase the costs of inputs, (2) increase the costs of polluting behavior, (3) increase public concern about mercury and public support for reducing environmental releases, and/or (4) decrease the costs of adopting environmentally-preferred alternatives. As shown in Table 3, these costs can ultimately influence decisions at each stage of the mercury lifecycle. Appendix B identifies specific action items in each of these cost categories, suggests whether a national or statewide effort is appropriate, and includes observations on each item. To spur mercury reductions effectively, these costs should be linked specifically to mercury use and release and be structured so that manufacturers and consumers avoid those costs as they reduce and eliminate mercury.

The specific actions would influence decisions at each phase of the mercury lifecycle as described below.

Influence supply decisions:
Efforts to influence mercury supply decisions are most appropriate at a national level. These programs could raise the costs of supplying mercury by imposing duties on imported mercury or by developing incentives to make secondary mercury a more attractive purchasing decision.

Influence Product Design decisions:
Identifying mercury-free alternatives, providing incentives to switch to mercury-free products, and incorporating at least some of the environmental costs of mercury contamination into input costs will help make mercury a less attractive input and encourage a shift away from mercury-containing products. EPA could also support efforts to develop alternative technologies that do not rely on mercury.

Influence Manufacturing decisions.
EPA could increase awareness of mercury by lowering the Toxic Reduction Inventory (TRI) reporting threshold and expanding the industrial sectors required to report under TRI such that it encompasses a larger number of the facilities that release mercury. Manufacturers will be more likely to take reduce their mercury use and release if they are required to report their releases to the public. Requiring emissions controls on those currently unregulated sources of mercury, where mercury is intentionally used or incidentally released, will also provide incentives for facilities to reduce their mercury emissions.

Influence Purchasing Decisions.
Programs that help consumers identify mercury-containing products and identify mercury-free alternatives will help influence their decisions about purchasing mercury-containing products. Developing a labeling program for products that contain mercury, such as electrical products, instruments, and other items would alert consumers that mercury is present and that special disposal requirements may exist. EPA and the States could also influence purchasing decisions by educating public and industrial purchasers. For instance, some of the Great Lakes States have contacted caustic soda purchasers to encourage them to purchase mercury-free caustic soda.

Influence Disposal options.
Programs that affect mercury disposal could be targeted at consumers that discard mercury wastes or items, as well as disposal facilities that receive mercury wastes. Some States have begun to restrict disposal of mercury-containing wastes, which in turn could cause consumers to seek alternative items that do not require special handling. Some States have also begun to influence disposal options by requiring stringent mercury emissions limits on incinerators and other waste disposal facilities that can be reached in a more cost effective manner if the facilities engage in source reduction instead of relying on expensive control technology.

Using the general approach of influencing decisions at appropriate points in the mercury lifecycle, these ideas can be applied readily to specific industrial sectors that are large mercury users. For instance, the following example shows how some of the ideas described in Appendix B could apply to the different lifecycle stages for mercury as it is used in the chlor-alkali and dental industries. These examples are provided for illustrative purposes only and do not necessarily represent EPA endorsement. A similar approach could be applied to any sector that uses mercury.

Chlor Alkali industry:

Product Design: Provide incentives for remaining mercury-cell process plants to switch to non-mercury cell processes; tax mercury as an input.

Manufacture: Impose more stringent controls on mercury releases; impose fees on mercury emissions.

Consumer Purchase: Encourage caustic soda purchasers to purchase caustic soda made from mercury-free processes (Note: Some Great Lakes States have begun to explore this approach).

Disposal: The RCRA land disposal restrictions for mercury-cell chlor-alkali wastes became effective in 1993. The remaining challenge is to ensure that these wastes are recycled, not exported.

Dental Industry:

Design: Support research into mercury-free amalgams; tax mercury as an input.

Manufacture: Establish emissions limits on dental equipment suppliers; lower TRI threshold for mercury releases.

Consumer purchase: Work with dental community and insurance companies to offer consumers mercury-free amalgams.

Disposal: Limit mercury disposal to wastewater treatment plants; develop recycling program for dental wastes.

B. Supporting Activities in Other Forums

Mercury contamination is receiving widespread attention, and consequently, a number of important mercury reduction activities are currently underway in other forums throughout the region. Many states have expressed a desire to move forward with specific mercury reduction efforts, and thus, EPA has an important opportunity to support and coordinate with these efforts. For instance, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Mercury Task Force released a report entitled Strategies for Mercury Control in Minnesota in 1994, which emphasizes the need to pursue conventional control standards, pollution prevention programs, and incentive-based controls to address mercury contamination problems. Many of Minnesota's existing programs are serving as models for other states that are beginning to develop their own mercury reduction programs. Michigan has recently formed a special mercury task force that is pursuing mercury reduction opportunities for the State. As a first step, it is developing public education materials to encourage consumers to select non-mercury items.

EPA is currently working with Canada to develop a Bi-National Strategy to reduce bioaccumulative pollutants in the Great Lakes. This strategy will incorporate some of the information gleaned from the Virtual Elimination project. Region V States and EPA have formed a mercury workgroup to help bring a coordinated focus to mercury reduction activities in the region. EPA has also formed a national mercury task force in EPA headquarters to help address mercury at a national level. In addition, the ongoing Lakewide Management Plans (LaMPs) provide important vehicles for reducing toxic chemicals in the region.

These are but a few of the activities currently underway in the region to reduce mercury. Because many of the recommendations described in Appendices A and B can -- and should -- be implemented by various levels of government, EPA should continue to work with and contribute to these ongoing programs.

V. CONCLUSION

This options paper has set forth a series of actions that can help reduce mercury use and release, couched in a general strategy of integrating mercury reduction efforts up front. EPA's role in any given action will differ, ranging from providing support to ensuring that pending rule changes adequately address mercury concerns. For each action, EPA will need to identify the specific steps needed as well as the appropriate role it could play in implementation.

To implement a virtual elimination strategy, EPA will need to work in partnership with the Great Lakes States as it determines which options to pursue from the menu displayed in Appendix B. It will need to pursue mercury concerns at a national level so that Great Lakes States are not affected disproportionately to the rest of the nation. EPA will also need to work with Canada to help protect the common resource of the Great Lakes. In addition, EPA will need to work with manufacturers, utilities, and disposal facilities to identify and develop alternatives to mercury and to reward those companies that reduce and eliminate mercury. By giving careful consideration to the implications of each action, and teaming effectively with other governmental agencies, EPA can continue to be a leader in the burgeoning national movement to reduce mercury contamination in the Great Lakes and nationwide.

Appendix

This document is available only in Portable Document File format (43kb)

End Notes

     ¹ Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd., Mercury Sources and Regulations: Background Information for the Virtual Elimination Pilot Project. September 12, 1994; and Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd., Polychlorinated Biphenyls Sources and Regulations: Background Information for the Virtual Elimination Pilot Project. September 12, 1994.

     ² See U.S. EPA, Virtual Elimination Pilot Project: Briefing Packet for Meeting Participants, September 21-22, 1994.

     ³ PCB reduction opportunities are not included in this report.

     ⁴ See U.S. EPA, Mercury Study Report to Congress (External Review Draft), 1995.

     ⁵ NOTE: Briefing materials for the 1994 Virtual Elimination meeting used four stages to describe the mercury lifecycle. In this report, we have expanded that concept to five stages in order to incorporate mercury production/supply decisions into this framework.

     ⁶ See (External Review Draft) U.S. EPA, Mercury Study Report to Congress, 1995.

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