This looks like a trial balloon, sent up to see whether this issue can be whipped up into public hysteria after the global warming blimp collapses. Mercury is not good, to be sure: but it passes through a living organism fairly quickly, and just because it is heavy, it generally doesn't spread very far. And there is some reason to believe that natural sources of atmospheric mercury are more significant than human ones:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/04/was-good-science-really-applied-in-the-recent-mercury-report-issued-by-the-florida-department-of-environmental-protection/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/01/mercury-the-trickster-god/

It may be another case of scientists mistaking: "We just discovered this!" for "This just happened!"

Actually, the ubiquitous presence of mercury may be beneficial to wildlife. Habitat destruction is the chief cause of species extinction. Increasing human population is the prime cause of habitat destruction. Mercury probably decreases human fertility as it does with other forms of life. If the effect on humans is great enough other forms of life will benefit.

"This looks like a trial balloon, sent up to see whether this issue can be whipped up into public hysteria after the global warming blimp collapses". Precisely my thoughts on initial reading!

American EPA mercury emission standards effectively eliminates coal as a fuel source. Same crowd as the anti coal zealots.

I guess we can expect the 'science' to be of the same calibre as went into the anti CO2 fiasco. Love to see science from Greenpeace, WWF, and all the other 'teenagers' who think they are environmental scientists.

The 'precautionary' principle will be dragged out for this one as well.

John J. Links are spot on.

The IPCC now acknowledges that there has been no warming due to CO2 for 17 yrs,so they have to find more demons to enslave us economically.Mercury can easily be removed from smoke stacks via scrubbers and filtration.Why were not our enviro-dementalists pushing this barrow years ago?

Just google UN Agenda 21 and you will see that our billionaires are using the environmental movement as a tool to totally enslave us

I think some of you should settle down a little and stop trying to fit this evidence with some sort of conspiracy theory.

At my work we have been collaborating with a scientist who is investigating increased Mercury contaminantion in colonies of Little penguin.

Interestingly, there are two colonies of the same species, however one colony changes location when breeding and raising chicks.

The main colony remain in one location and backgroun Selenium appears to hold the effects of mercury in these birds in check.

Unfortunately the other colony move to an area that is Selenium deficient, and they all (taken from moulted feathers) show enhanced uptake of Mercury, clearly showing that Selenium masks or inhibits the uptake and impact of Mercury in these birds. The birds that lack the Selenium have a high mortality rate and nest abandonment is high.

Mercury biomagnifies in the food chain, and the observations above show that Mercury has a negative impact. Let's see where the science goes on this before we all crank it up to something that it is not.

Let the scientists continue to monitor and see where this leads before blaming the IPCC or the UN in some bizarre imaginary conspiracy.

As David F writes, habitat destruction causes most deaths. Surely, though, it is time everyone accepted that pollution is bad. There is no level of toxicity in any environment that is good. Wheelers and dealers demand more studies, absolute proof of the problem before even admitting there is one, and then demand to know what levels of toxicity are possible before total extinction occurs so they can pollute to that level. We've gone too far down the road of 'growth' to extricate ourselves without a great deal of pain. Global free trade has rendered all countries interdependent so independence is impossible. Populations have become so enormous, personal waste alone is poisoning the planet, let alone that of industry and warfare. The only way our inglorious leaders can see to prevent a very bloody world-wide revolution is to continue to pretend continuing 'growth' is possible. But that's only deferring the consequences of unsustainable increasing industrialisation.
We just might manage a 'softer landing' if we stopped now. Accepted that poisons in our air, water and soils are killing all life - us as well, and back-track as fast as we can towards a primitive way of life. It will cause a lot of grief, but less than what's going to happen if we carry on as we are.

Some time ago a group of us visited the Lady Vera gold mine in a gully north of Noojee in the Victorian Highlands. A couple of us had gold pans, so we decided to see what we could find in the creek adjacent to an old stamp mill.
We didn't find any gold, but we found lots of mercury. That mine was probably well over 100 years old, but the mercury which had been used to recover the gold was still there in abundance, slowly being dissolved into the water.
All of the old gold mines used mercury as do most of the small ones in developing countries. Modern large scale mines use quite dilute Sodium Cyanide solution, which ultimately decomposes into Sodium Carbonate so contamination problems are minimal.
I suspect that most of the world's old gold mining areas will have this problem for centuries to come and there is very little that can be done about it.

Geoff of Perth note emphasis of the topic.It is the toll on wildlife and not a toll on all life.These envio nazis are anti-human and like our Maurice Strong would like to see the world's pop reduced by 90%.

Will they put their hands up to go first? We've been aware of Mercury poision for a long time and the Environ-Nazis have concentrated on the lie of CO2 causing AGW.The lie has been revealed and even the IPCC is now admitting that it got it wrong.

"Just google UN Agenda 21 and you will see that our billionaires are using the environmental movement as a tool to totally enslave us"

Carefull Arjay, you will be labelled a conspiracy nut.... I guess it will dawn on them at some time.