Combating air pollution significantly reduced air mercury concentrations in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the past decade, China has motivated proactive emission control measures that have successfully reduced emissions of many air pollutants. For atmospheric mercury, which is a globally transported neurotoxin, much less is known about the long-term changes in its concentrations and anthropogenic emissions in China. In this study, over a decade of continuous observations at four Chinese sites show that gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) concentrations continuously increased until the early 2010s, followed by significant declines at rates of 1.8%–6.1% yr−1 until 2022. The GEM decline from 2013 to 2022 (by 38.6% ± 12.7%) coincided with the decreasing concentrations of criteria air pollutants in China and were larger than those observed elsewhere in the northern hemisphere (5.7%–14.2%). The co-benefits of emission control measures contributed to the reduced anthropogenic Hg emissions and led to the GEM decline in China. We estimated that anthropogenic GEM emissions in China were reduced by 38%–50% (116–151 tons) from 2013 to 2022 using the machine-learning and relationship models.