Alaska mercury

Gray JE, Theodorakos PM, Bailey EA, Turner RR. 2000. Distribution, speciation, and transport of mercury in stream-sediment, stream-water, and fish collected near abandoned mercury mines in southwestern Alaska, USA. Sci Total Environ 260 21-33. 

Scheuhammer AM. 1990. Accumulation and toxicity of mercury, cadmium and lead in vertebrates. In Workshop to Design Baseline and Monitoring Studies for the OCS Mining Program, Norton Sound, Alaska — Workshop Proceedings, US Dept, of the Interior Minerals Management Service, OCS Study, mms90-059. 

Polar bear, Ursus maritimus Alaska 1972 total mercury young vs. adults Northern area ... 

Lentfer, J.W. and W.A. Galster. 1987. Mercury in polar bears from Alaska. Jour. Wildl. Dis. 23 338-341. 

Meador, J.P., D.W. Ernest, and A.N. Kagley. 2005. A comparison of the non-essential elements cadmium, mercury, and lead found in fish and sediment from Alaska and California. Sci. Total Environ. 339 189-205. 

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), as of 2008, the world s primary mercury resources can be found in Ghina, Krygyzstan, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, and Ukraine. In the United States, mercury is found in states such as Alaska, Arkansas, Galifornia, Nevada, and Texas. 

Concentrations of mercury have also been measured in breast milk from several populations in the United States as well as other countries (see Table 5-17). Breast milk concentrations have been reported for two U.S. populations one in rural Iowa (Pitkin et al. 1976) and the other from Alaska (Galster 1976). Pitkin et al. (1976) reported a total mean mercury concentration in breast milk of 0.9 0.23 ppb (range, 0.8-1.6 ppb). The mean total mercury concentrations in the Alaskan populations were 3.3 0.5 ppb for the urban population, 3.2 0.8 ppb for the interior population, and 7.6 2.7 ppb for the coastal population that consumed fish and marine mammals. 

Subsistence Hunters. Native American populations, such as the Inuit of Alaska and other subsistence hunters (particularly those living in high latitude areas of the United States), may be exposed to mercury in wild game (e.g., seals, narwhal, walrus, and other game species or marine mammals). 

Native American populations that depend heavily on marine mammals are considered to be at higher risk than the general population. Wheatley and Paradis (1995a, 1995b) reported blood mercury levels in native peoples from 514 communities across Canada. Of these individuals, 23% had methylmercury blood levels >20 g/L (the WHO assessment level), while 1.6% of these individuals had blood levels >100 g/L (the WHO benchmark for at-risk populations). Native American populations in the western Arctic (Alaska) may be at similar risk as a result of their consumption of marine mammals, although no recent information on methylmercury concentrations in blood, hair or urine for these populations was... 

Lasora BK, Cittemam. 1991. Segmental analysis of mercury in hair in 80 women of Nome, Alaska. 

The general background level of mercury was increased for a factor of two to five due to many years of anthropogenic activities (Munthe et al. 2001). For example, analysis of sediments from lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as in Sweden, and as in remote lakes in southeast Alaska, shows mercury concentrations in the upper layers that are two- to five-fold higher than those associated with pre-industrialized times. 

Although it is accepted that atmospheric mercury burdens have increased substantially since the pre-industrial period, it is uncertain whether overall atmospheric mercury levels are currently increasing, decreasing, or remaining stable. Measurements of mercury over remote areas of the Atlantic Ocean show increasing levels up until 1990 and a decrease for the period 1990-1994 (Slemr 1996, Pirrone et al. 2000, Munthe et al. 2001). However, other measurements at remote sites in northern Canada and Alaska show deposition rates... 

Data sets for mercury are now available for locations in the Adriatic Sea, Alaska, Antarctica, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Florida, Greenland, India, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Spain, Taiwan, Tennessee, Thailand, and Viemam. 

In Nome, Alaska, gold mining is responsible, in part, for the elevated mercury levels (max. 0.45 mg/kg DW) measured in modern beach sediments. However, higher concentrations (max. 0.6 mg/kg) routinely occur in buried Pleistocene sediments immediately offshore and in modem nearby unpolluted beach sediments (1.3 mg Hg/kg). This suggests that the effects of mercury contamination from mining are less than natural concentration processes in the Seward Peninsula region of Alaska. 

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