Mercury Pollution Control Services: Ensuring Mercury Does Not Contaminate Your Wastewater
Released in infinitesimal amounts from commonly used products, mercury pollution can unknowingly contaminate your wastewater. In many service areas, the discharge of mercury into wastewater is prohibited, and can result in a comprehensive assessment of sources and removal/control technologies. EBI Consulting experts have been at the forefront of this work, helping to reduce mercury discharge concentrations by 90% from hospitals, laboratories, educational facilities, and other industrial facilities.
EBI Consulting can provide you with all the information needed to implement effective mercury pollution control with our full range of services:
- Wastestream Characterization
- Inventory of potential mercury-bearing wastestreams
- Evaluation of cost-effective product substitution and source control measures
- Installation of mercury pretreatment systems
- Employee awareness training and education
- Regulatory compliance/permitting
Why do I need to worry about controlling mercury pollution?
If your company is a hospital, dental clinic, laboratory, educational facility, or even a manufacturing facility using cleaning, disinfection agents or pH neutralization chemicals, chances are you are now releasing mercury in many of your wastewater discharges. As state and federal efforts to reduce mercury pollution result in tighter controls on local wastewater treatment facilities, publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) will in turn look upstream, at your facility and others using the sewer system, to apply more stringent controls. Such events have already happened in the Great Lakes region, California, Maine, and Massachusetts.
The stringent controls may come in the form of new local discharge limits, or the requirement to develop "best management practices" (BMPs) to find and eliminate mercury pollution sources that are released from your facility. A proactive approach to this problem can save a great deal of money and time from later regulation and potential enforcement actions. You can demonstrate to the regulators that the necessary steps have been taken to identify and reduce mercury releases from your facility.
How does mercury get into my facility?
Mercury is found in many commonly used chemicals, reagents, fixatives, and cleaning products, usually as an impurity in small amounts. The concentrations may be much less than would be required to show on a material safety data sheet (MSDS), so you may not be aware that it is present. Research conducted in Boston area hospitals has identified several hundred products that contain mercury. Some products contain mercury for a specific reason, others have mercury as a byproduct of a manufacturing process. Some recent test results from the hospitals found mercury in many products that are routinely used by hospital labs as process chemicals and reagents, such as:
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-Trichrome Blue:
-TB Decolorizer:
-Formalin:
-Bouins:
-B-5 Fixative:
-Effect II:
-Aldex:
-RDO:
-Sponge Exudate:
-HGBA1C Buffer:
-IFE Buffer:
-Elec. Stain:
-Blood Bank Reagents:
-Blood Bank Saline:
-Immu Add (LISS):
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7.1 ppb
65.6 ppb
25.8 ppb
46.6 ppb
148.4 ppb
23.3 ppb
99.9 ppb
24.6 ppb
124.6 ppb
28 ppb
200 ppb
1,800 ppb
14,300 ppb
29 ppb
206 ppb
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(parts per billion)
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Cleaning and disinfecting agents, such as bleach and soaps, as well as commonly used acids have been found to have hundreds of parts per million of mercury. In fact, a recent study by the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies demonstrated that even familiar household products (used in many industries as well) can contain significant levels of mercury. Examples include dishwater detergent (560-1,320 parts per trillion), bleach (<200-6,170 parts per trillion) and drain cleaners (2,970-5,490 parts per trillion). As a point of reference, new discharge permit requirements for sewer authorities in Maine, state in the Great Lakes region and other locations are proposing discharge limits for municipal dischargers at 10 parts per trillion or less.
Once present, mercury pollution can build up on your piping, sink drains, traps, and tanks, and can take months or years to leach out into your wastestream. These sources, over time, can result in discharge levels at several parts per billion from many industrial and institutional process wastestreams.
Why has mercury pollution control become a priority issue within the Northeast?
States in the Northeast region of the United States and states adjacent to Canadian provinces have recently entered into agreements to "virtually eliminate" man-made sources of mercury from air and wastewater discharges. This virtual elimination policy has been developed in response to increasing concerns for the health effects of mercury exposure, particularly for children and consumers of fresh-water fish species. Mercury is a potent toxin that can bioaccumulate (build up) within different species, and eventually within humans.
Federal, state, and local regulatory agencies are adopting more stringent regulatory controls for mercury pollution to respond to this emerging public health issue. These tighter mercury controls include (a) the development of single parts-per-trillion discharge requirements for POTWs; (b) the removal of "mixing zones" from National Pollutant Discharge and Elimination System (NPDES) permits; and (c) more stringent total maximum daily load (TMDL) requirements for facilities that are located in watershed areas that EPA has determined will need to reduce existing mercury loads.
View more EBI Consulting environmental health and safety services.
Learn more about mercury pollution control services at EBI Consulting by calling 781.273.2500, emailing info@ebiconsulting.com, or viewing our sample environmental health and safety projects.
NOTE: The full report can be downloaded from the AMSA web site at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/pubs/mercury/mercury.cfm.