Establishing an Ambient Mercury Baseline in New York State
Kevin Civerolo
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,
Division of Air Resources
Albany, NY USA
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) received a grant from EPA to establish continuous monitoring of ambient concentrations and weekly wet deposition of mercury in New York, consistent with the proposed NADP Atmospheric Mercury Initiative. These baseline data will be used to help monitor the progress of planned mercury reduction strategies targeting the municipal waste incineration and coal-fired electricity generation sectors. Fully speciated Tekran analyzers and MDN-type bucket collectors have been deployed at two urban locations, Rochester and New York City. The wet deposition samplers have been in operation since January 2008, while the Tekrans were installed during the summer of 2008. Precision measurements demonstrate that for Hg(0) the Tekran analyzers agree to within 5%. The initial wet deposition data from these two urban locations will be compared with similar MDN data from more rural sites (Biscuit Brook, Huntington Wildlife, and West Point) in the state.