International and Regional Perspectives -- Global Mercury Production, Use and Trade -- Mercury Emissions from Anthropogenic Sources: Estimates and Measurements for Europe -- Legislation and Policy Concerning Mercury in the European Union -- The DG Research Perspective-Research on Hg Supported by the European Commission -- Perspective on Mercury: Progress Through Cooperation -- Where We Stand on Mercury Pollution and its Health Effects on Regional and Global Scales -- Monitoring and Analytical Methods -- The Monitoring and Modelling of Hg Species in Support of Local, Regional and Global Modelling -- Determination of Mercury and its Compounds in Water, Sediment, Soil and Biological Samples -- Chemical and Physical Processes -- Environmental Chamber Studies of Mercury Reactions in the Atmosphere -- Air-sea Exchange and Marine Boundary Layer Atmospheric Transformation of Hg and their Importance in the Global Mercury Cycle -- Terrestial Hg Fluxes: Is the Next Exchange Up, Down, or Neither? -- Chemical Transformation of Gaseous Elemental Hg in the Atmosphere -- Modelling Chemical and Physical Processes of Hg Compounds in the Marine Boundary Layer -- Modelling Transport and Transformation of Hg and its Compounds in Continental Air Masses -- Human Exposure -- Exposure to Mercury in the Americas -- Exposure to Hg in the General Population of Europe and the Arctic -- Methylmercury Exposure in General Populations of Japan, Asia and Oceania -- Mercury Pollution from Artisanal Gold Mining in Block B, El Callao, Bolivar State, Venezuela -- An Ecosystem Approach to Describe the Mercury Issue in Canada: From Mercury Sources to Human Health -- The GEF/UNDP/UNIDO Global Mercury Project — Environmental and Health Results from a Small-Scale Gold Mining Site in Tanzania -- Development of Programs to Monitor Methyl-Mercury Exposure and Issue Fish Consumption Advisories -- Health Effects and Risk Assessment -- Regional Case Studies -- Dynamic Processes of Atmospheric Hg in the Mediterranean Region -- Spatial and Temporal Variability of Atmospheric Hg in North-Western and Central Europe-Observations on Different Time Scale -- Atmospheric Hg: A Decade of Observations in the Great Lakes -- Recent Trends in Hg Emissions, Deposition, and Biota in the Florida Everglades: A Monitoring and Modelling Analysis -- Mercury Pollution in China — An Overview -- Mercury Pollution in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions -- EMEP Regiona/Hemispheric Mercury Modelling: Achievements and Problems.

Mercury pollution in different regions of the world is a growing concern from an environmental and epidemiological point of view. The increasing trends of energy production from fossil fuel combustion, mercury usage in a large variety of goods and products, and the lack of emission control policy, especially in fast developing countries, represent a major environmental and political issue for national and international organisations and governments as well. In the last decade, there has been a significant effort to improve our knowledge on different aspects involved in the biogeochemical cycle of mercury in the environment and its impact on human health. Special attention has been devoted to fill the gaps in our knowledge on physical and chemical processes involved in the transfer of mercury compounds released to the atmosphere from natural and anthropogenic sources to terrestrial and aquatic receptors. Significant progress was made on assessing the spatial and temporal distributions of atmospheric mercury and its depositional fluxes. Dynamics of Mercury Pollution on Regional and Global Scales: Atmospheric Processes and Human Exposures Around the World provides a detailed overview of our current understanding of different dynamic patterns involved in the redistribution of mercury in the global environment, and its impact on human health and ecosystems.