Mist containing mercury poisoned the US city

Mist from the Pacific Ocean swept into San Francisco, USA, carrying toxic mercury compounds.

According to Popular Mechanics, fog research scientists along the California coast discovered a quantity of nerve monomethyl mercury with a density 20 times higher than in rainwater. The study reveals how the compound's approach to land comes primarily from coal and these fossil fuels.

"On a relative scale, the amount of mercury is quite low and does not cause health problems. But it will accumulate gradually in biological organizations," said Peter Weiss-Penzias, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. , said. Weiss-Penzias and a number of other researchers, including Kenneth Coale at Moss Landing Ocean Laboratory, founded the FogNet project and sampled fog for two summers at the stations collected along the coast.

Fog covers the city of San Francisco.(Photo: Wordpress).

The researchers identified medium-sized whirlpools from California ocean currents that caused dimethyl mercury to settle in the mist, where acid-containing particles evaporate from the sea, making it converted into monomethyl mercury . This compound then followed the mist to land.

The amount of mercury found in the fog is relatively small.This is the result of the burning of coal, mining and metal processing of humans. However, it can accumulate in animal food and water.

Animals and plants in the fog area carry 10 times more mercury than usual, according to research published by scientists at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union last December. For example, wolf spiders live on the seaside, which the team examined during the foggy period with the amount of mercury in the body exceeding the safety level set by the US Food and Drug Administration.In the long term, fog can become a major source of mercury dispersal in California's coastal environment.