Helcom : HM emissions to the air

Atmospheric emissions of heavy metals in the Baltic Sea region

Editor(s): Alexey Gusev, EMEP MSC-E

Key message

Annual emissions of heavy metals from HELCOM countries have decreased during the period from 1990 to 2010 by 63% for cadmium, 68% for mercury, and 90% for lead.

Results and Assessment

Relevance of the indicator for describing the developments in the environment This indicator shows the levels and trends in cadmium, mercury, and lead emissions from anthropogenic sources of HELCOM countries to the atmosphere. The emissions of heavy metals represent the pressure of emission sources on the atmosphere of the Baltic Sea region and subsequently on the Baltic Sea aquatic environment.

Policy relevance and policy reference HELCOM adopted a Recommendation in May 2001 for the cessation of hazardous substance discharges/emissions by 2020, with the ultimate aim of achieving concentrations in the environment near to background values for naturally occurring substances and close to zero for man-made synthetic substances.

On the European level the relevant policy to the control of emissions of heavy metals to the atmosphere is being taken in the framework of UN ECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP). The Executive Body of CLRTAP adopted the Protocol on Heavy Metals on 24 June 1998 in Aarhus (Denmark). It targets three particularly harmful metals: cadmium, lead and mercury. According to one of the basic obligations, Parties have to reduce their emissions for these three metals below their levels in 1990. The Protocol has been entered into force in 2003 and has been signed and/or ratified by 41 countries.

Assessment Annual emissions of heavy metals from HELCOM countries have decreased during the period 1990-2010 by 63% for cadmium, 68% for mercury, and 90% for lead (Figure 1). The most significant drop of cadmium emissions can be noted for Lithuania (88%) and Estonia (85%). Mercury emission most significantly decreased in Russia (44%) and Lithuania (89%). For the lead emission, the most significant decrease can be seen for Russia and Lithuania, more than 100 and 50 times, respectively, comparing to 1990. Essential reduction of annual lead emission of HELCOM countries from 2003 to 2004 is mostly caused by the change of emission in Russia.

The reduction in heavy metal emission to the atmosphere is a consequence of increased use of lead-free fuels, use of cleaner production technologies as well as of economic contraction and industrial restructuring in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia in early 1990s.

In 2010 total annual emissions of HELCOM countries amounted to 76 tonnes of cadmium, 26 tonnes of mercury, and 844 tonnes of lead. Among the HELCOM countries the largest contributions to cadmium total emissions of HELCOM countries belong to Poland (58%) and Russia (30%), for mercury – to Poland (54%) and Germany (33%), and for lead – to Poland (61%) and Germany (23%).

Maps with time-series of annual total Cd, Hg, and Pb emissions of HELCOM countries are shown in Figures 2-4. The diagrams also show the fractions of emissions deposited to the Baltic Sea. The largest fractions belong to Denmark and Sweden (about 20% for lead and cadmium and 10% for mercury), and the lowest one to Russia (about 0.5%).

HMs emis 1990-2010.gif

Figure 1. Total annual emissions of cadmium, mercury, and lead to air from HELCOM countries in period 1990-2010 (% of 1990).

Figure 2: Map of cadmium emissions of HELCOM Contracting Parties (CP) to air as totals in tonnes/year for the period 1990-2010. Red sections of the bars identify the fraction of emission deposited to the Baltic Sea. (The emission data of the CP refer to the total area of the CP except for Russian Federation, for which emissions from the territory of Russian Federation within the EMEP domain is used). Note: different scales have been used for different countries!

Figure 3: Map of mercury emissions of HELCOM Contracting Parties (CP) to air as totals in tonnes/year for the period 1990-2010. Red sections of the bars identify the fraction of emission deposited to the Baltic Sea. (The emission data of the CP refer to the total area of the CP except for Russian Federation, for which emissions from the territory of Russian Federation within the EMEP domain is used). Note: different scales have been used for different countries!

Figure 4: Map of lead emissions of HELCOM Contracting Parties (CP) to air as totals in tonnes/year for the period 1990-2010. Red sections of the bars identify the fraction of emission deposited to the Baltic Sea. (The emission data of the CP refer to the total area of the CP except for Russian Federation, for which emissions from the territory of Russian Federation within the EMEP domain is used). Note: different scales have been used for different countries!

Data

Table 1. Cadmium emissions from anthropogenic sources of HELCOM countries from 1990 to 2010. Values of emissions estimated using interpolation are shaded. Units: tonnes/year

	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
DK	1.0	1.0	0.8	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2
EE	4.4	4.2	3.0	2.2	2.9	2.0	1.0	1.1	1.0	0.9	0.6	0.5	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.7
FI	6.3	3.5	3.0	2.8	2.2	1.7	1.5	0.9	1.3	0.6	1.3	1.7	1.3	1.2	1.5	1.3	1.3	1.0	1.2	1.3	1.4
DE	17.3	13.6	10.8	9.3	8.7	11.4	10.7	11.2	10.5	10.5	10.2	9.7	9.1	8.7	8.0	7.3	6.9	6.4	5.5	4.7	5.3
LV	0.3	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2
LT	3.6	3.3	2.9	2.5	2.1	1.7	1.5	1.3	1.1	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.3	0.4	0.4
PL	91.6	85.0	84.1	91.9	85.8	82.6	91.2	85.8	55.4	61.7	50.4	52.5	48.7	48.5	46.0	46.0	43.4	40.4	39.8	36.8	44.3
RU	79.4	68.2	68.8	59.0	56.6	57.4	51.0	50.4	49.0	50.9	50.5	51.0	51.5	57.3	55.4	59.4	59.4	47.1	34.9	22.6	22.6
SE	2.3	1.7	1.4	1.1	0.8	0.7	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.6
Tot	206	181	175	170	160	158	158	152	119	127	115	117	113	118	113	116	113	97	83	67	76

Table 2. Lead emissions from anthropogenic sources of HELCOM countries from 1990 to 2010. Values of emissions estimated using interpolation are shaded. Units: tonnes/year

	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
DK	125	103	94	54	23	23	23	20	22	29	17	17	16	17	19	16	14	12	12	11	11
EE	205	188	124	102	123	85	66	46	39	39	36	36	36	38	36	35	31	40	35	28	39
FI	338	258	185	109	68	67	45	29	32	25	45	45	46	38	28	22	25	22	20	18	23
DE	2075	1305	989	818	626	693	559	451	436	436	433	418	397	382	373	352	348	339	199	174	191
LV	92	84	77	75	70	63	60	55	50	10	10	11	11	11	11	8	9	9	8	8	8
LT	151	163	85	78	64	89	97	97	8	7	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	7	4	3	3
PL	1372	1336	986	997	966	937	960	896	736	745	647	610	588	596	600	536	589	553	510	459	524
RU	3591	3553	3095	3276	2643	2426	2304	2247	2262	2339	2352	2235	2118	2207	330	355	355	247	140	32	32
SE	355	310	290	141	51	37	33	33	32	30	26	23	20	19	18	14	14	14	9	13	13
Tot	8303	7300	5925	5650	4633	4420	4147	3874	3619	3660	3573	3402	3237	3314	1421	1345	1392	1243	937	746	844

Table 3. Mercury emissions from anthropogenic sources of HELCOM countries from 1990 to 2010. Values of emissions estimated using interpolation are shaded. Units: tonnes/year

	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
DK	3.1	3.2	2.9	2.8	2.6	2.3	2.4	1.9	1.6	1.4	1.1	1.1	0.9	0.9	0.8	0.8	0.7	0.7	0.7	0.5	0.4
EE	1.1	1.0	0.8	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.7	0.6	0.4	0.6
FI	1.1	0.9	0.8	0.6	0.7	0.7	0.8	0.6	0.6	1.2	0.6	0.7	0.7	0.8	0.7	0.9	1.0	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.9
DE	28.3	22.2	17.8	15.1	13.5	13.9	13.7	13.8	13.8	13.8	13.9	13.6	13.0	12.8	12.4	11.7	11.4	11.0	9.8	8.9	9.3
LV	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.2	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1
LT	3.5	3.1	2.7	2.3	2.0	1.6	1.4	1.2	1.0	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.5	0.5	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.3	0.6	0.4
PL	33.3	32.7	31.9	32.5	32.4	32.3	33.6	33.0	29.5	27.1	25.6	23.2	19.8	20.2	19.8	20.1	16.1	16.1	15.7	14.2	14.8
RU	15.6	13.4	11.4	11.8	10.4	10.4	10.1	9.6	9.4	9.9	10.0	10.1	10.2	11.4	11.9	14.0	14.0	9.7	5.3	1.0	1.0
SE	1.6	1.3	1.2	1.1	1.1	1.0	1.1	0.9	0.9	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.6	0.7	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.6	0.6
Tot	88	78	70	67	63	63	64	62	57	56	53	50	46	48	47	49	45	40	34	27	28

Meta data

Technical information:

1. Source:

EMEP/MSC-E UN ECE Secretariat

2. Description of data:

Annual total emissions of all three metals were officially reported to the UN ECE Secretariat by HELCOM countries. These data are available from the EMEP Centre on Emission Inventories and Projections (CEIP) (http://www.ceip.at/).

3. Geographical coverage:

European region

4. Temporal coverage:

Data on lead, cadmium, and mercury annual emission totals are available for the period 1990 – 2010 for all HELCOM countries but Russia. The Russian Federation did not submitted information for 2001 and 2007-2010. Therefore the values of emissions from Russia for 2001 were obtained using interpolation between emissions for 2000 and 2002 and for 2006-2009. The same level of emissions as for 2009 was assumed in model simulations for 2010. Mercury and cadmium and mercury emissions for Lithuania for the years between 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2004 were obtained using interpolation.

5. Methodology and frequency of data collection:

National data on HM emissions are annually submitted by countries Parties to CLRTAP Convention to the UN ECE Secretariat. The methodology is based on combination of emission measurements and emission estimates based on activity data and emission factors. Submitted emission data are processed using quality assurance and quality control procedure and stored in the UN ECE/EMEP emission database at EMEP/CEIP Centre.

Quality information:

6. Strength and weakness:

Strength: data on emissions are annually submitted, checked and stored in the database

Weakness: gaps in time series of national emissions, uncertainties in national emissions, lack of gridded emissions, and incompleteness

7. Uncertainty:

Among the HELCOM countries the level of uncertainty of official data on HM emission was reported by Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. From the EMEP countries the information on uncertainties of HM official emissions is available for France and the United Kingdom. The uncertainty of reported data on HM emissions expressed as percentage relative to mean value of emission is as follows:

Finland: Hg -22% - +22% Pb -25% - +25% Cd -25% - +25%

Denmark: Hg 130% Pb 625% Cd 325%

France: Hg 41% Pb 51% Cd 54%

Sweden: Hg 99% Pb 15% Cd 47%

UK: Hg -30% - +40%. Pb -30% - +50%. Cd -20% - +50%.

8. Further work required:

Further work of national experts on emissions of HMs is required to fill the gaps in the emission time-series and to reduce their uncertainties.

For reference purposes, please cite this Baltic Sea Environment Fact Sheets as follows:
[Author’s name(s)], [Year]. [Baltic Sea Environment Fact Sheets title]. HELCOM Baltic Sea Environment Fact Sheet(s) 2012. Online. [Date Viewed],http://www.helcom.fi/environment2/ifs/en_GB/cover/.

Last updated 28.9.2012