A Global Look at Mercury Exposures: Supporting the Goals of the Minamata Convention

摘要

The Minamata Convention on Mercury sets guidelines for limiting human exposure to this environmental toxicant. Article 22 ofthe Minamata Convention, which entered into force in August2017, calls for parties to monitor mercury in the environment aswell as in people as a way of assessing the effectiveness of theconvention.1 Investigators have now conducted the first state-ofthe-science systematic review of mercury biomonitoring data,which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives.2The new review was conducted to support the 2018 GlobalMercury Assessment, published by the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme.3 But it goes hand in hand with the MinamataConvention to help identify background exposures, explainsstudy leader Niladri Basu, who holds a Canada Research Chair inenvironmental health sciences at McGill University in Montreal,Quebec. “It is still unclear how the Minamata Convention willaffect people, but we hope it has a positive effect in the future,”Basu says.