Mercury in sediments of Ulhas estuary

Mercury pollution in Ria de Aveiro (Portugal): a review of the system assessment

“…In addition dissolved and particulate mercury make little impact on the nearshore environment of the Atlantic Ocean (Pato et al 2008b). Other systems, mostly contaminated by extinct chloralkali plants, namely Cartagena bay (Colombia), Ulhas estuary (India), Venice lagoon (Italy) and Bahía Blanca estuary (Argentina) showed lower mercury concentrations in sediments at the outer parts, away from the pollution source, than nearby the chlor-alkali plant (respectively, Alonso et al 2000;Ram et al 2003;Bloom et al 2004;De Marco et al 2006). However, in Pra river system (Ghana), although the highest concentrations corresponded to areas of active and past mining activities, mercury is most likely transported to depositional downstream terminal basins, like the river delta and the nearshore Gulf of Guinea (Donkor et al 2006).…”

“…Donkor et al 2006). Some of these cases can be illustrated by the following worldwide examples: in three coastal systems located at the littoral of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, (De Marco et al 2006) and in the in Mugu Lagoon, southern California, USA, (Rothenberg et al 2008), anthropogenic sources are related to urban and industrial activities and land drainage; in Pra river Basin, (southwestern Ghana) it is related to artisanal gold mining with metallic mercury (Donkor et al 2006); while in Venice lagoon, Italy (Bloom et al 2004), Cartagena bay, Colombia (Alonso et al 2000), and Ulhas estuary, India, (Ram et al 2003), mercury contamination is mostly related to extinct chlor-alkali plants. All the refereed systems were assessed concerning the sediment compartment and for the most cases analysis in fish tissues was included (Table 1).…”

Chronology of mercury enrichment factors in reef corals from western Venezuela

“…We reviewed key scientific contributions and technical reports (some rather obscure) describing the development and operation of industries in the coastal areas of Golfo Triste (Grau, 1972(Grau, , 1995Iglesias and Penchaszadeh, 1983;Ministerio Energia y Minas, 1994;Jaffe et al, 1998;Roulet et al, 2000;Wilhelm, 2001;Wright and Welbourn, 2002;Ram et al, 2003).…”

“…Consequently, coastal marine environments near heavily industrialized regions and petrochemical plants are polluted with this metal (Hornberger et al, 1999;Garcia-Rico et al, 2006). Mining, use of pesticides, incineration, and production of cement and chlorine also contribute to the dispersal and deposition of Hg in the oceans (Lin and Pehkonen, 1999;Guentzel, 2001;Wilhelm, 2001;Ram et al, 2003;Weiss-Penzias et al, 2003).…”

Untitled

“…These results indicated that for the meantime there were no environmental effect of these heavy metals resulted of mud, unless when these metals are associated with other elements. For example, among the other metals, mercury has high similarity for suspended particles, which can lead to its extraction from the water column and its accumulation in the sediments, resulted that sediments functioning as a deposit and also mercury source to pore waters and biota (Ram et al, 2003;Ramalhosa et al, 2006). In addition, through methylation processes which is mediated by bacteria in sediments, its convert mercury into methyl mercury, the most toxic lipophilic form (Heyes et al, 2006;Kim et al, 2006).…”