The Protocol on Heavy Metals, which was signed in 1998 and entered into force in 2003, was the first international treaty to regulate heavy metals on a broad regional basis. The amended Protocol, negotiated under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (Air Convention), further steps up Parties’ efforts to reduce their emissions for these three heavy metals and establishes more stringent emission limit values based on best available techniques for the main stationary sources emitting these pollutants. Since 1990, emissions of mercury (by 60%) and lead (by 90%) have already declined in the region. The amended protocol requires 24 Parties in Europe and North America to take measures to prevent and minimize emissions of cadmium, lead and mercury, by regulating combustion and industrial processes as predominant anthropogenic sources of their emissions, in line with the precautionary approach. On 8 February, another milestone to control heavy metal pollution will be taken with the entry into force of amendments to the 1998 Aarhus Protocol on Heavy Metals, adopted in 2012. Even in smaller quantities, heavy metals released into the atmosphere and subsequently deposited on ecosystems, such as forests, water and vegetation, can cause significant environmental and health damage. Heavy metals such as mercury have led to great harm to human health and the environment, for example in the 1950s in Minamata, Japan, when the release of methylmercury in the industrial wastewater from a chemical factory poisoned many people.
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