The Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) has been investigating mercury-added skin lightening products (SLPs) for several years, primarily due to their health risks, their illegality under many national laws, and the prohibition by the Minamata Convention on Mercury against the manufacture and trade of mercury-added SLPs, which generally became effective …
This report, Global Chemicals Outlook, compiled by UNEP in cooperation with international experts, is designed to inform governments and industry on trends in chemicals production, use and disposal, while offering policy advice aimed at meeting the 2020 goal. It focusses particularly on the challenges and opportunities facing developing nations. The …
The project aims at monitoring 10 types of pollutants that affect people's health; it will also work towards reducing concerns. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) plans to install 10 air quality monitoring systems and 20 automatic weather stations across Mumbai. These stations will measure pollutants such as suspended …
The proposed air pollution measurement and forecasting system will track mercury levels, vindicating experts' views that the presence of the heavy metal in the air Mumbaikars breathe is a cause for concern. If the mercury levels are high, it can spell trouble for citizens' health. Exposure can affect the central …
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority is planning to revive its three-year-old project for setting up an electronic-waste (e-waste) disposal facility. There is an urgent need to set up this facility as e-waste generated by the city is piling up faster due to electronic devices getting obsolete sooner following rapid …
A ground-breaking, legally-binding global treaty on reducing mercury pollution has been signed by 92 countries. The treaty spells "the beginning of the end of mercury as a threat to human health and the environment", UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner, told a diplomatic meeting in Japan earlier this …
The Minamata Convention on Mercury was adopted on Thursday, 10 October 2013 at 11:11 am in Kumamoto, Japan, following decades of increased awareness regarding the toxicity of mercury and mercury-related compounds. The journey started in the seaside town of Minamata, Japan, where scientists identified in 1956 a long-term discharge of …
A U.N. conference adopted a treaty on mercury control Thursday near the site of Japan’s worst industrial poisoning, as Tokyo pledged $2 billion to help poorer nations combat pollution. Delegates from some 140 countries and territories will formally sign the world’s first legally binding treaty on the highly toxic metal, …
Nations have begun signing a legally binding treaty designed to curb mercury pollution and the use of the toxic metal in products around the globe. Mercury can produce a range of adverse human health effects, including permanent damage to the nervous system. The UN treaty was formally adopted at a …
Japan among the first to sign Minamata Convention on Mercury Kumamoto, Japan, 10 October 2013: Japan, a country which has come to epitomize mercury poisoning in modern times, today became one of the first countries to sign a historic new international convention to reduce emissions and releases of the toxic …
This document contains the text of the Minamata Convention on Mercury as agreed, in the form of the draft Convention, by the intergovernmental negotiating committee to prepare a global legally binding instrument on mercury at its fifth session, held in Geneva from 13 to18 January 2013.
On Monday, 7 October 2013, delegates convened in Kumamoto, Japan, for the intergovernmental preparatory meeting in preparation for the signing of the Minamata Convention on Mercury at the Diplomatic Conference to be held on 10 and 11 October.
In July 1956, in a fishing village near the city of Minamata on Japan’s Shiranui Sea, a baby girl named Shinobu Sakamoto was born. Her parents soon realized something was wrong. At 3 months old, when healthy babies can hold up their heads, Sakamoto could not. She grew slowly and …
Very high levels of prenatal maternal mercury have adverse effects on the developing fetal brain. It has been suggested that all possible sources of mercury should be avoided. However, although seafood is a known source of mercury, little is known about other dietary components that contribute to the overall levels …
The state-run Soil Resources Development Institute has found some 40 per cent of both locally produced and imported fertilisers adulterated. Laboratory tests by SRDI also found that the adulteration levels in fertilisers, including urea, DAP, SSP, SOP and boron, increased compared with the levels last year. SRDI officials on Tuesday …
The efforts to increase awareness about eco-friendly Ganesh puja seem to be failing. Tank Bund on Wednesday witnessed several thousands of devotees immersing idols ranging from small to giant sizes decorated with non-biodegradable products containing heavy metals like mercury and lead which are extremely dangerous to the ecosystem. Though a …
Though more than a year has passed since the E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules came into effect in May 2012, their implementation is still in a nascent stage, at least in Varanasi, one of the major cities of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, the state ranks fourth among the 10 largest …
Toxic levels of mercury dumped in Amazon rivers gets into food chain, posing serious health risk to children, study finds Indigenous children in Peru's south eastern Amazon, an area where tens of thousands of illegal gold miners operate, have unsafe mercury concentrations over three times the level of their non-native …
Concerned over serious public health and environmental impacts of mercury pollution, Nepal is likely to be a signatory country to the Minamato Convention on Mercury, a legally binding treaty agreed by the world to prevent emissions and releases. The UN Minamato Convention on Mercury came into effect from January this …
Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) will soon lose its ‘Green’ rating, when the Treasury introduces the `Green Procurement System’. However, the country is not geared to go for Light-emitting diode (LED) soon due to the cost factor, says policy advocacy head Hemantha Withanage. Executive Director of the Centre for Environment Justice …
China is the world’s worst polluter but largest investor in green energy. Its rise will have as big an impact on the environment as on the world economy or politics. All industrial nations one day hit an environmental turning-point, an event that dramatises to the population the ecological consequences of …
