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Nature 00102.txt

#Nations pull together to cut mercury emissions: Nature News An international treaty to control mercury emissions looks set to become reality. More than 140 nations decided to begin negotiations for the mercury-limiting treaty at a 20 february meeting in Nairobi of the governing council of the United nations environment programme (UNEP. Talks to iron out the details are expected to last for at least three years, with a version to go before the governing council for consideration by 2013. In the meantime, governments have agreed that any voluntary mercury-reduction schemes should be accelerated. US negotiators arrived in Nairobi in agreement with the idea of setting binding limits a change from the view of the prior administration, which held that voluntary guidelines would suffice.""There was a complete reversal in the position of the United states, "says UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall.""This came as a very big, and positive, surprise,"adds John Munthe, an expert on mercury emissions and international environmental policy at the Swedish Environmental Research Institute in Stockholm. Mercury is a global pollutant, he notes, and"to solve problems in any country we need a global strategy"."In May 2008, the European parliament voted to ban the export of products containing mercury, starting in 2011. And the European union already has tight regulations on mercury use in place, says Alistair Steel, executive director of the Brussels-based industry group Euro Chlor. Traditionally, chlorine production has used a mercury electrode in the electrolysis of sodium chloride, but alternatives are increasingly being used. Munthe predicts that the initial focus of the UNEP treaty will not be on the chlorine industry, laboratory chemicals or low energy light bulbs that contain mercury.""I don't think these areas where mercury still has important uses will be the first to go, "he says. It is more likely that the treaty will first tackle illegal gold mining, in which mercury is used to form an amalgam with gold particles in river sediments; or China's use of mercury catalysts in the manufacture of plastics. In addition, coal fired power plants, which emit mercury because of its natural presence in coal, could be fitted with mercury-capture kits, technology that already exists but is used not universally.""Once you have the prospect of a legally binding treaty it concentrates the minds of governments and companies,"says Nuttall a

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