EMECAP Conference on mercury as a global pollutant

Environmental problem management    
    
The process of risk management for environmental contaminants involves the integration of environmental and biomedical data with social, economic, and 
political information to decide how to reduce or eliminate potential human health risks. It would be valuable to develop a set of links and partnerships between 
organisations and individuals across Europe to promote the exchange of ideas, information and technology on complex environmental problems, to better understand 
them and to inform environmental operators, politicians and individual citizens.    
The EMECAP project joins this vision and, taking into account technical, environmental and biomedical issues, provides individuals and regulatory bodies 
with a new tool to face the problem of mercury pollution.   
   
The problem of mercury   
   
The toxicity of mercury on humans is well known and widely recognized because of its effects on the central nervous system and on organs like kidney and liver. 
In particular, the effects of high doses of elemental mercury and methilmercury are well known, since many scientific studies have been carried out on mercury 
mine workers and on regular consumers of contaminated fishes. Anyway less known are the effects that mercury causes on humans for long exposures to low concentrations. 
  
   
Mercury Cell Chlor-Alkali plant   
   
The Mercury Cell Chlor-Alkali (MCCA) sector constitutes one of most important anthropogenic metallic mercury source (about 15% of the global). At present 
MCCA plants are all over the world with 100 operating units in Asia, 63 in Europe, 45 in America, and 17 in Africa.