US EPA: Mercury Study Report to Congress - Vol. 2 - An Inventory of Anthropogenic Mercury Emissions in the United States
Description
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Section 112(n)(1)(B) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), as amended in 1990, requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) to submit a study on atmospheric mercury emissions to Congress. The sources of emissions that must be studied include electric utility steam generating units, municipal waste combustion units and other sources, including area sources. Congress directed that the Mercury Study evaluate many aspects of mercury emissions, including the rate and mass of emissions, health and environmental effects, technologies to control such emissions and the costs of such controls. In response to this mandate, U.S. EPA has prepared an eight-volume Mercury Study Report to Congress. This volume -- Volume II of the Report to Congress -- estimates emissions of mercury from anthropogenic sources and provides abbreviated process descriptions, control technique options, emission factors and activity levels for these sources. The information contained in this volume will be useful in identifying source categories that emit mercury, in selecting potential candidates for mercury emission reductions and in evaluating possible control technologies or materials substitution/elimination that could be used to achieve these reductions (as presented in Volume VIII of this Report to Congress). The emissions data presented here also served as input data to U.S. EPA's local impact analyses and long-range transport model that assessed the dispersion of mercury emissions nationwide (as presented in Volume III of this Report to Congress).
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