Mercury and methylmercury in Baltic Sea sediments, and Polish and Lithuanian soils

Abstract

As so ci ate Ed i tor: Beata Jaworska-SzulcWe re view the cur rent en vi ron men tal pol lu tion by mer cury in the soils of Po land and Lith u a nia and in the sed i ments of the Bal tic Sea. Mer cury is doc u mented to have many neg a tive im pacts on the en vi ron ment as a toxic trace el e ment. In many differ ent chem i cal forms, it is be ing re leased into the en vi ron ment by both geogenic and anthropogenic ac tiv i ties, with most being re leased from anthropogenic sources. Methylmercury is con sid ered one of the most toxic forms found in the en vi ron ment. Mer cury lev els in sed i ment and var i ous point sources in creased af ter World War II in the Bal tic Sea, which was used as a dumpsite. Pre vi ous stud ies show no tice able dif fer ences in to tal mer cury in the Bal tic Sea. In the Warta and Odra rivers in Po land, mer cury lev els are also higher than the back ground value, though re cent find ings sug gest that river sed iments are not the main source of mer cury to ma rine sed i ments. Con cen tra tions in soils in Po land and Lith u a nia were be low the level of limit val ues (1 and 1.5 mg/kg -1 re spec tively), but Up per Silesia showed con cen tra tions (up to 4.01 mg • kg -1 ) above the limit val ues. Fur ther more, be tween 1992 and 2006, mer cury lev els in Wroc³aw dropped dra mat i cally. The dom inant trees in the area can af fect mer cury ac cu mu la tion. No data were avail able for com par i son with the soils in Es to nia and Lat via.

Mercury in the sediments of selected peatlands in Małopolska region

“…Palaeogeographic studies show that the greatest amounts of mercury were introduced into the natural environmentand particularly into the atmospherearound the mid-20th century. This is reflected in the metal's content not only in bog sediments (Benoit et al 1998;Martinez-Cortizas et al 1999;Roos-Barraclough et al 2002;Biester et al 2002Biester et al , 2006Steinnes, Sjøbakk 2005;Farmer et al 2009;Zaccone et al 2009;Rydberg et al 2010;Zuna et al 2012;Allan et al 2013;Coufalík et al 2013;Küttner et al 2014;Talbot et al 2017) but also in lacustrine sediments (Lockhart et al 1998;Santos et al 2001;Cannon et al 2003;Ribeiro-Guevara et al 2010;Thevenon et al 2011;Hermanns, Biester 2013;Lacerda et al 2017;Schütze et al 2018;Guédron et al 2019;Péres-Rodrígues et al 2019;Okupny et al 2020;Juśkiewicz, Gierszewski 2022) and marine sediments (Hare et al 2010;Leipe et al 2013;Ignatavičius et al 2022).…”