PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 5: Mercury cycles: Sources, mass balances, bioaccumulation, and options to manage affected systems
Organizer(s): EPH Best, JG Wiener, and D Planas
Monday, August 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 511 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Human exposure to mercury as a consequence of landscape management and socio-economical behaviors: Four case studies in Canada.
Lucotte, Marc*,1, Mergler, Donna1, Canuel, René1, de Grosbois, Sylvie1, Roué, Anne1, Pinsonnault, Nathalie1, 1 COMERN, UQAM, c.p. 8888, Suc. Centre Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada
ABSTRACT- In direct continuation with the acquired knowledge of ecosystem approach for the presence of mercury in the Amazon, we have launched in 2001 the NSERC-supported pan-Canadian COMERN project. This Collaborative Mercury Research Network addresses the urgent need for the development of a framework enabling researchers, political stakeholders, and communities concerned by the mercury question to evolve towards an interdisciplinary association capable of synergistically combining our knowledge on Hg into an original synthesis. We are presently working at developing a simple index representative of the specific vulnerability of an ecosystem to Hg bioaccumulation and subsequent transfer to humans. This index includes two concepts: (1) the sensitivity to bioaccumulation, induced and influenced by factors such as the Hg loading, the different transport and methylation processes, and human activities and (2) the adaptability of the ecosystem, an evaluation of its resilience, or its capacity to recover and/or to cope with the contamination, taking into account the social and political resources within the communities impacted. We started to apply this approach to four distinct case studies representative of the large spectrums of both Hg contamination and Hg exposure through fish consumption in Canada, i.e. sports fishers of lakes of the boreal forest, commercial fishers of the industrialized region of the St Lawrence River, first nation communities in Labrador and seafood consumers of the Bay of Fundy.
Key words: mercury exposure, human health, landscape management, ecosystem approach