Mercury in the Environment

Mercury In The Environment

Biomaginification is when a particular pollutant (Mercury in this instance) increases rapidly as it reaches organism on higher levels of a trophic chart. This process works out this way because organisms on lower tiers consume the pollutant (unknowingly), after time these organisms are consumed by other organisms, but because the second organism has to consume more of the first organism species to survive it will end up with greater levels of the poison than the lower tiers. This process continues up all the way until reaching the predators who are no longer hunted by other creatures. (Also another reason biomaginification works out this way is that animals on the higher end of trophic charts tend to live longer than those on lower tiers, allowing more time to consume pollutants).

Mercury has many uses to Humanity even though it is a very potent poison when consumed. It has been used in  Lights, Batteries, thermometers, in felt production, mining purposes, and is used to form alloys with other heavy elements. One particularly evident way in which Mercury is introduced into the environment is though gold ore mining processes (which mercury plays a particularly important role in. Mercury is used with gold mining to help extract, and mire efficiently refine gold, though through this process especially in the past contamination was always a problem, and in many cases (in the past) The Mercury was just dumped into lakes after its use had been served. 

Mercury travels differently in terrestrial and aquatic food webs. The dangers of the Mercury are much higher in aquatic based life however. It is unknown exactly how Mercury comes to enter into the ecosystems diet however one theory suggest bacteria that consumed the mercury and are than eaten by gradually ascending trophic level fish until eventually reaching humans. One separate theory also suggest that the Mercury is absorbed into a fish body purely by living in contaminated waters. Fish staring with small micorinverbrates like Scubs absorb some, than are consumed by large micorinverbate, than by tout, than by humans, and birds (See Diagram 1). Which ever way is true the end result is the same the organisms on the higher end are in greater danger to the adverse effects (especially Humans).

Diagram 1

 There have been numerous different clean up efforts that attempt to clean up Mercury from the bottom of lakes (like the Efforts in lake Onondaga) however these efforts are slow going at best. The main problem that emerges from trying to clean up Mercury form lakes is that It degrades very slowly (if not at all), which means removing the contamination, means removing the contaminated soil. This process of removing the soil is incredibly expensive as it involves dredging parts of the water or though costly drilling endeavors, Though almost every endeavor that attempts to clean up a Mercury ridden lake than plan usually starts at cleaning the whole thing, but as the project drags on and more money is spent people turn towards containment instead. Many suggest plans include building natural barriers around the lake to prevent it form effecting areas/ waters beyond the lake or building an artificial lake bed that would cover the Mercury instead of getting rid of it.



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