While mercury recycling laws are effective at decreasing mercury released into the United States, they have resulted in the recycled mercury being actually sold to primitive gold mines in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the mercury is used to extract gold.
The result is that the mercury is put back into the air and water and distributed worldwide where it eventually pollutes the very environment from where it was originally recycled.
Gold mining in the developing world is the second largest source of mercury pollution. Such mines emit 1,000 tons of mercury into the air every year. It is not clear how much recycled mercury is exported from the United States to developing countries, but estimates are well over 250 tons per year.
Europe has enacted plans to ban all mercury to developing nations for gold mining by 2011, but the United States has made no such efforts.
