The UNEP Governing Council has concluded that there is sufficient evidence of significant global adverse impacts from mercury to warrant further international action to protect human health and the environment from mercury and its compounds. The Governing Council decided that national, regional and global actions should be initiated and urged all countries to adopt goals and take actions, as appropriate, to identify populations at risk and to reduce human-generated releases.
In response to the Governing Council’s request, UNEP has established a Mercury Programme to encourage all countries to adopt goals and take actions, as appropriate, to identify exposed populations, minimize exposures through outreach efforts, and reduce anthropogenic mercury releases. An important part of the UNEP Mercury Programme is to develop training materials, guidance documents and toolkits on a number of relevant topics that may be of use to Governments and others in their efforts to evaluate and address mercury pollution.
Before taking actions to address mercury, governments will want to consider developing a knowledgebase for evaluating the risks posed by mercury and for taking appropriate action to reduce those risks. This “Toolkit for identification and quantification of mercury releases” (Toolkit) is intended to assist countries to build part of that knowledge base through the development of a mercury inventory that identifies sources of mercury releases in their country and estimates or quantifies these releases.
Executive summary
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The “Toolkit for identification and quantification of mercury releases” (Toolkit) is intended to assist countries to build a knowledge base on mercury through the development of a mercury inventory that identifies sources of mercury releases in their country and estimates or quantifies the releases.
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Using the inventory and other additional knowledge, the most cost-effective reduction measures can be identified for decision making. Often, such inventories are also vital in the communication with stakeholders such as industry, trade and the public.
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Baseline inventories, and subsequent up-dates, can also be used to monitor progress towards pre-set goals, and thereby identify successful approaches which could serve as examples in other areas, as well as areas where the applied measures do not prove adequate and further attention and initiative is needed.
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This Toolkit aims to assist countries that are developing their mercury inventory to estimate releases of mercury, and also leads them through the process of how to enhance and refine these inventories. The Toolkit’s goal is to guide the inventory makers within a country through the different techniques and stages of developing the inventory, by providing a methodology, illustrative examples and extensive information on mercury release sources. The Toolkit aims to reduce the workload in the creation of national or regional mercury inventories.
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The Toolkit is designed to produce a simple and standardized methodology and accompanying database to enable assembly of consistent national and regional mercury inventories. It comprises a UNEP-recommended procedure for the effective compilation of source and release inventories of mercury. Comparable sets of mercury source release data will enhance international co-operation, discussion, goal-definition and assistance. Comparable datasets also help to establish a global picture of the scale of releases, as a step in prioritizing actions to control or reduce releases, and improves possibilities for enlarging the international knowledge base on mercury uses and releases.
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In this updated version, the Toolkit describes two levels of detail and simplification, called Inventory level 1 and Inventory Level 2. This document describes the methodology of Inventory Level 2 of the Toolkit, and at the same time serves as a reference document providing background information for the further simplified Inventory Level 1. The separate Toolkit Guideline to Inventory Level 1 describes the methodology and procedures of Inventory Level 1.
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The methodology of Inventory Level 2 consists of a four-step procedure that will facilitate development of consistent and comparable source inventories.
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In the first step, a coarse screening matrix is used to identify the main mercury source categories present in a country. Also, any existing partial mercury inventories or descriptions of mercury sources in the country (or region) should be identified and collected.
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In the second step, these main source categories are further classified into sub-categories in order to identify the individual activities that potentially release mercury. If only a qualitative identification of source types present in the country or region in question is desired, step three (quantification) can be omitted, and the qualitative findings can be reported as a commented list of main source categories and sub-categories identified in the country.
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In the third step, a quantitative inventory is developed. At this step, it may be considered if a full quantitative inventory should be created from the start, or as an initial step, an interim inventory is desired to support of the prioritization of the further work and initiate communication with inventory participants/reviewers. It can be recommended to use the Inventory level 1 tools for interim inventory development. For a detailed quantitative inventory, activity volume data ("activity rates") and process-specific information is gathered to be used to calculate estimated mercury releases from the identified mercury release sources in the country (or region) in question. Releases are calculated via the equation and procedures and source type data described in the Toolkit. However, given the uncertainties and complexities involved, it is anticipated that many inventories may have only qualitative emission or quantitative use information for some sources. This information may in some cases be sufficient for identifying and initiating mercury reduction activities in a given country or region.
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The fourth and final step is the compilation of the standardized mercury inventory using the results generated in steps 1 through 3. A standardized presentation format is provided to ensure that all known sources are considered (even if they cannot be quantified), data gaps are apparent and inventories are comparable and transparent.
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The final mercury inventory will show that all potential sources have been considered, even if the activity does not exist or is insignificant in that country. For each source within a country there will be an estimate of releases to all media where data are sufficient and an indication of likely magnitude if full data are unavailable. Major data gaps will be listed. Taken together, this process will help in the interpretation of results and the prioritization of future actions.
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