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Opening Ceremony - Sunday, August 6th, 2006
The conference opened with a ceremony in the Monona Terrace. The event served both as a welcome and a vehicle to set the stage for issues addressed throughout the meetings. It included:

• Welcome by conference co-chair James Hurley
  
• Presentation of flags from all countries represented at the conference
  
• Introduction of an international global mercury art project involving students from eight locations around the world
  
• Remarks from Dr. Komyo Eto from the National Institute for Minamata Disease on the fiftieth anniversary of the Minamata disaster
  
• Views of mercury as it affects American Indian tribes in the Upper Midwest USA by George Goggleye, Chairman of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe
  
• Perspectives on mercury by U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Russell Feingold
  
• Tribal Drum performance by the Sokaogon Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

Monday Plenary - August 7th, 2006
Source attribution of atmospheric mercury deposition

During the past two decades, researchers have generally concluded that human-related mercury emissions have increased the total amount of mercury in the atmosphere about 3-5-fold over pre-industrial times, and the rate of deposition to the earth’s surface is concomitantly higher. However, at any specific location, the actual change in the relative rates of current to historic mercury deposition may vary widely from that range, depending strongly on the relative contributions of local, regional, and global sources. Also, although human-related emissions are reasonably well cataloged, natural and legacy emissions have been less well studied, and the "background" level impact for any particular location is difficult to estimate. Adding to this uncertainty are observations that emissions from the two largest natural sources (volatilization from the oceans and soils) are relatively under-studied as net sources or sinks, and as re-emitters of previously deposited mercury. Unraveling the complexities of relating emission controls to mercury deposition rates is essential for understanding current trends and making future predictions. However, it is debatable whether we presently have the needed technical understanding for making predictions. For example, while mercury emissions in some regions of the world have decreased over the past decade (e.g., North America), emissions from the Asian continent have reportedly increased rapidly, and the overall global mercury emission budget has leveled off after decades of declines. As a result, the benefits of reducing local and regional emissions remain an active area of research and debate due to the prospect for increasing inputs of "imported mercury" from global emissions.

The Key Question posed to this panel: Can we ascertain with confidence the relative contributions of local, regional, and global sources, and of natural versus anthropogenic emissions to mercury deposition?

Panel Chair: Steve Lindberg, USA

Panelists: Orren R. Bullock, USA; Ralf Ebinghaus, Germany; Daniel Engstrom, USA; Xinbin Feng, China; William Fitzgerald, USA; Nicola Pirrone, Italy; Eric Prestbo, USA; Christian Seigneur, USA

Research on environmental mercury contamination has been largely motivated by the human health risks of methylmercury exposure, which results from consumption of finfish, aquatic mammals, and shellfish. Recent toxicological research on methylmercury has focused largely on neurological effects of low-level exposure, with emphasis on fetal exposure from maternal transfer. In particular, results from the epidemiological studies in the Faroe and Seychelle Islands continue to advance scientific understanding of the effects of dietary exposure to methylmercury before birth or during early childhood. Other sublethal effects of methylmercury exposure have been recently recognized, including endocrine disruption, organ dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and immune suppression; however, the doses producing such effects and the dose-response relations have not been determined. Methylmercury exposure can be substantial in biota atop aquatic food webs, and the results of recent descriptive and experimental studies imply that the reproduction and fitness of certain fish and wildlife could be adversely affected by exposure to environmentally realistic concentrations of methylmercury.

The Key Question posed to this panel: What is the evidence that humans, fish, wildlife, and other biota are being adversely affected by exposure to methylmercury?

Panel Chair: Donna Mergler, Canada

Panelists: Henry Anderson, USA; Laurie Chan, Canada; Kathryn Mahaffey, USA; Michael Meyer, USA; Michael Murray, USA; Mineshi Sakamoto, Japan; Mark Sandheinrich, USA; Anton Scheuhammer, Canada; Alan Stern, USA

Mercury contamination has degraded the quality of fishery resources in many of the world’s inland, coastal, and marine waters. This has diminished the socioeconomic, nutritional, cultural, and recreational benefits derived from these resources. Nearly all of the mercury in fish is methylmercury, a highly toxic compound that readily crosses biological membranes, accumulates in exposed organisms, and biomagnifies in food webs supporting fish production. Consumption of fish is the primary pathway of human exposure to methylmercury in much of the world. Atmospheric deposition is an important source of total mercury in many surface waters, and this mercury is believed to be a substantive source for the production of methylmercury that is accumulated in fish. Analyses of dated cores from many remote and semi-remote areas have shown that most of the mercury accumulating in lake sediment, peat, and glacial ice is from human activities. Reductions in anthropogenic emissions of mercury are, therefore, being considered as a means of decreasing both mercury concentrations in fish and the associated exposures of fish-eating humans and wildlife to methylmercury.

The Key Question posed to this panel: How would methylmercury levels in fish respond to reduced anthropogenic emissions of mercury?

Panel Chair: John Munthe, Sweden

Panelists: R. A. (Drew) Bodaly, Canada; Brian Branfireun, Canada; Charles Driscoll, USA; Cynthia Gilmour, USA; Reed Harris, Canada; Milena Horvat, Slovenia; Marc Lucotte, Canada; Olaf Malm, Brazil

In the dialog concerning environmental mercury contamination, little consideration has been given to the broad societal effects of mercury pollution. Consequently, applied or proposed corrective actions may be driven by technological, scientific, or narrowly defined financial considerations, without sufficient attention to the broader sociological, economic, or cultural implications of those decisions. For example, the contamination of fish with methylmercury is a serious consequence of environmental mercury pollution because consumption of fish is the primary pathway for human exposure to this highly toxic compound. The contamination of fish, therefore, has been viewed largely from a toxicological perspective with the focus on exposure and health effects. Yet mercury pollution has also diminished the economic, recreational, nutritional, and cultural benefits derived from fishery resources. In North America, mercury contamination now accounts for more than 80 percent of all fish-consumption advisories. Almost half of the 83,000 lakes in Sweden contain game fish with mercury concentrations exceeding their national guideline. In Canada, indigenous communities that abandoned subsistence fishing because of contaminated fisheries have experienced particularly severe consequences, including adverse effects on lifestyle, culture, social cohesion, economic status, and health. The socioeconomic losses caused by mercury contamination of fishery resources have not been quantified, but they are highly relevant to policy considerations regarding the problem.

The Key Question posed to this panel: What are the socioeconomic and cultural costs of mercury pollution?

Panel Chair: Edward Swain, USA

Panelists: Paul Jakus, USA; Frank Lupi, USA; Peter A. Maxson, Belgium; Jozef Pacyna, Norway; Alan Penn, Canada; Glenn Rice, USA; Samuel Spiegel, Canada; Marcello Veiga, Canada

Closing Ceremony - Friday, August 11th, 2006

• Student Awards
  
• Synthesis and Declaration
  
• Previa of Ninth International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP)
  
• Announcement of Tenth ICMGP
  
• Door Prizes