Articles | Volume 21, issue 16
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12783-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12783-2021
Research article
 | 
30 Aug 2021
Research article |  | 30 Aug 2021

Impact of Athabasca oil sands operations on mercury levels in air and deposition

Ashu Dastoor, Andrei Ryjkov, Gregor Kos, Junhua Zhang, Jane Kirk, Matthew Parsons, and Alexandra Steffen

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Cited articles

Alexander, A. C. and Chambers, P. A.: Assessment of seven Canadian rivers in relation to stages in oil sands industrial development, 1972–2010, Environ. Rev., 24, 484–494, https://doi.org/10.1139/er-2016-0033, 2016. 
AMAP and UNEP: Technical Background Report for the Global Mercury Assessment 2013, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, Oslo, Norway/UNEP Chemicals Branch, Geneva, Switzerland, 263 pp., 2013. 
Angot, H., Dastoor, A., De Simone, F., Gårdfeldt, K., Gencarelli, C. N., Hedgecock, I. M., Langer, S., Magand, O., Mastromonaco, M. N., Nordstrøm, C., Pfaffhuber, K. A., Pirrone, N., Ryjkov, A., Selin, N. E., Skov, H., Song, S., Sprovieri, F., Steffen, A., Toyota, K., Travnikov, O., Yang, X., and Dommergue, A.: Chemical cycling and deposition of atmospheric mercury in polar regions: review of recent measurements and comparison with models, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 10735–10763, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-10735-2016, 2016. 
APEI: Government of Canada, Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory, available at: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/pollutants/air-emissions-inventory-overview.html, last access: 25 July 2019. 
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Short summary
An assessment of mercury levels in air and deposition in the Athabasca oil sands region (AOSR) in Northern Alberta, Canada, was conducted to investigate the contribution of Hg emitted from oil sands activities to the surrounding landscape using a 3D process-based Hg model in 2012–2015. Oil sands Hg emissions are found to be important sources of Hg contamination to the local landscape in proximity to the processing activities, particularly in wintertime.
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