Mercury emissions from burning of biomass from temperate North American forests: laboratory and airborne measurements

The emission of mercury from biomass burning was investigated in laboratory experiments and the results confirmed in airborne measurements on a wildfire near Hearst, Ont. Mercury contained in vegetation (live, dead, coniferous, deciduous) was essentially completely released in laboratory burns in the form of gaseous elemental mercury and mercury contained in particles. Replicate burns of dry Ponderosa needles indicated a linear relationship between emitted mercury and fuel mass loss. Regionally collected fuels showed the same behavior as the replicate burns, i.e. essentially total removal of mercury. Mercury released from fuel could be accounted for as gaseous and particulate mercury in the smoke. The mercury content of regionally collected fuels varied between 14 and 70 ng/g on a dry mass (dm) basis. The smoke plume from a small wildfire was investigated with a research aircraft yielding a mean output of 0.15±0.02 ng/m 3 of elemental mercury for each ppm of CO 2 emitted. The particulate mercury determined by sampling at specific points in the plume was