One Health Approach to Regulating and Monitoring Mercury
Visual image depicting the Environmental Protection Agency’s One Health approach to control, reduce and eliminate mercury with the goal to protect human health and the environment. One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach—working at the local, regional, national, and global levels—with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. As mercury cycles through the environment impacting air, land and water, various EPA programs intervene at different steps to reduce mercury pollution and exposure to mercury. The purpose of the poster is to depict visually the EPA policies, regulations and interventions that minimize the impacts of mercury on the environment and human health and to highlight the need for a collaborative and holistic One Health approach. EPA addresses mercury in the environment by regulating air emissions, enforcing drinking water standards, cleaning up Superfund sites and creating fish guidelines to protect children and pregnant people. Long-term monitoring of air, water, soil, and fish tissue are crucial to understand the risk to human health and the environment. EPA has long recognized the interdependent links between people, animals, and their shared environments. This poster is a product from the EPA One Health Coordination Team.
Impact/Purpose
This meeting is an opportunity for One Health Coordination Team (OHCT) member Katie Davis to promote EPA’s One Health approach to mercury contamination in the environment and to show a novel 'discussion' poster on the topic. Her colleague, John Healey, will also be in attendance, separately sharing OW's mercury data from fish and sediment samples collected under the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) program; John is the OW-OST mercury data point person for EPA’s role in evaluating the effectiveness of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Showing One Health in this context raises the profile of One Health.Citation
Davis, K. One Health Approach to Regulating and Monitoring Mercury. Presented at National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) Fall Meeting and Scientific Symposium, Duluth, MN, November 04 - 06, 2024.Download(s)
- One Health Approach to Regulating and Monitoring Mercury (PDF) (1 pp, 589.8 KB, about PDF)