A United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) finished last week. No, not COP30 in Brazil, the climate talks. This was in Geneva, the sixth meeting of signatories to the Minamata Convention.
That’s a name you might vaguely recall. Perhaps at school you learnt about the awful mercury poisoning in Japan around a bay of that name last century, which led to global understanding of the dangers of this potent neurotoxin, and how it could be concentrated in the environment, particularly the marine environment.
Mercury – the dangers
The Minamata Convention, agreed in 2013, aims to take international action to stop other people suffering the same fate as the 900 Japanese who died, and the two million whose health was affected.
And there are two powerful pieces of good news out of this COP.
First, it was agreed that dental amalgam, containing mercury, should be phased out globally by 2034, with intermediate progress points along the way. Each nation will be required to submit a national action plan to phase out dental amalgam or a progress report by the end of 2027.
Campaign groups were advocating for a 2030 date, but are pleased with the solid outcome of the talks. Although there are plenty of countries in which this is already irrelevant, that is not the case here in the UK.
Here you can still go to the dentist and get a mercury filling, unlike 43 countries where they are banned, or on the way to being banned. And that has serious impacts, as the Rivers Trust and Wildlife and Countryside Link highlighted last week, with the release of an important study launched to coincide with this COP.
More than 98% of fish and mussels tested in English waters contain mercury levels above EU safety limits. And it is not just a little above: more than half the fish and mussels tested have mercury levels more than five times above the EU safety limits.
The UK has been slow to act
The way in which the UK is trailing the world was highlighted last week in a debate in the House of Lords. This was called to address the difficulties created by the porous border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which forced special arrangements for dental services, providing for a delayed phaseout in dental amalgam in the former, in line with the rest of the UK. As I said during the debate, this is bad for the people of Northern Ireland, bad for the UK and bad for the world.
Disappointingly, the UK was one of the laggards in Geneva, advocating for slower action, despite the obvious public health relevance on our own shores.
Leadership from the global south
But the second really notable aspect of the Minamata Convention talks was the powerful leadership provided by African states determined not to become a dumping ground for products when they are banned in the global north, and also leading the way with low-tech but effective and safer dental treatment (known as atraumatic restorative treatment – ART) which was developed in Tanzania in the 1980s.
As with mobile telephones, online banking and solar panels, they don’t see the need to go through the same stages of ‘development’ as the global north before getting to the 21st century best practice.
The other concern was about waste disposal. To deal safely with the mercury in old-fashioned fillings, African states either have to buy expensive separators from the global north or export the waste at significant cost.
The positive outcome of the conference does not mean, however, that there are not plenty of other issues with mercury pollution that urgently need attention. Many countries in the global south are suffering badly as gold mining pollutes their air and land with mercury.
We are used to the idea of blood diamonds; mercury-poisoning gold might not be such a catchy phrase, but it is something we should really be talking about. Globally, gold mining is estimated to release 800 tonnes of mercury into the air per year. That is nearly 40% of global emissions. These are global emissions; they do not stay where the emissions happen.
The risks are acute in the Amazon, as highlighted by the campaigning priest Miguel Ángel Cadenas, who works in Peru. In Colombia, three UN human rights special rapporteurs have come together to warn that the health and survival of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities is in danger, while river dolphins and fish populations in the Atrato River are also being severely affected. Similar impacts are occurring in Senegal,Nigeria, Botswana and other nations.
Mercury threatens food crops globally
Even though we have known about the danger for decades, there is still plenty to learn about the environmental impacts of mercury, as has just been shown by an important study in the Journal of the European Geosciences Union. We are used to the idea that food crops are being contaminated as a result of mercury drifting in dust around the world, settling in the soil and then being taken up through root systems.
What this study has demonstrated, which we have not realised before, is that mercury is being taken in from the air by plants when they photosynthesise. It is going directly into the green, leafy crops that we all need.
It is telling that the Mercury COP started on global One Health Day, as declared by the World Health Organization. That delivers the message that human, animal and environment are indivisible. We’re being subjected to an increasing cocktail of pollution, micro- and nano-plastics, PFAS, pesticides, and heavy metals including mercury. This is a cocktail whose effects on our bodies and ecosystems is cumulative, and ever-increasing.
Thanks to the European Network for Environmental Medicine, which provided me with reports about the talks.
