140 countries agree to cut mercury emissions

Geneva: More than 140 countries have reached a deal to cut mercury emissions after all-night talks in Geneva, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Saturday.

“A treaty to start to begin to rid the world of a notorious health-hazardous metal was agreed in the morning of Jan 19,” Nuttall said, UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall told.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury – named after the Japanese city where people were poisoned in the mid-20th century from industrial discharges of mercury – could take three to five years to come into force, UNEP said.

Small-scale gold miners, who use mercury as a catalyst to separate gold from its ore, would also be protected in the deal that took three years to negotiate, it added.