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Indicator Specification
Heavy metals (such as cadmium, mercury and lead) are recognised as being directly toxic to biota. All have the quality of being progressively accumulated higher up the food chain, such that chronic exposure of lower organisms to much lower concentrations can expose predatory organisms, including humans, to potentially harmful concentrations. In humans they are also of concern for human health because of their toxicity, their potential to cause cancer and their ability to cause harmful effects at low concentrations. Their relative toxic/carcinogenic potencies are compound specific. Specifically, exposure to heavy metals has been linked with developmental retardation, various cancers, kidney damage, and even death in some instances of exposure to very high concentrations. Those heavy metals that are already a focus of international and EU action. The major concern is centred on their possible role in carcinogenic, immunological and reproductive effects but more recently concern has also been expressed over their possible harmful effects on human development.
Tons (metric tonnes)
Coupled with improved control and abatement techniques, targeted international and EU legislation (directives and regulations) has led to good progress in most EEA-32 countries in reducing heavy metal emissions. Such legislation includes:
There are also a number of specific EU environmental quality standards and emission standards for heavy metals and POPs for these substances in coastal and inland waters, drinking waters etc. These have only indirect relevance to air emissions as they do not directly specify emission or precipitation quality requirements, but rather specify the required quality of receiving waters. Such measures include for example, the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). Other measures including restrictions on the use of heavy metals in certain consumer products, such as the EC Regulation on the Banning of Exports of Metallic Mercury and Certain Mercury Compounds and Mixtures and the Safe Storage of Metallic Mercury (1102/2008) and Directive 2007/51/EC amending Council Directive 7/769/EEC relating to Restrictions on the Marketing of Certain Measuring Devices Containing Mercury.
Finally, a February 2009 UNEP Governing Council decision has established the framework for a new global treaty on mercury.
The HM protocol to the UNECE LRTAP Convention obliges Parties to reduce their emissions of cadmium, lead and mercury from the level of emissions in 1990 (or an alternative year from 1985 to 1995 inclusive).
Indicator is based on officially reported national total and sectoral emissions to UNECE/EMEP (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe/Co-operative programme for monitoring and evaluation of the long-range transmission of air pollutants in Europe) Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP Convention), submission 2009. Recommended methodologies for emission inventory estimation are compiled in the EMEP/CORINAIR Atmospheric Emission Inventory guidebook, EEA Copenhagen (EEA, 2009). Base data are available from the EEA Data Service (http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=1096) and the EMEP web site (http://www.ceip.at/). Where necessary, gaps in reported data are filled by ETC/ACC using simple interpolation techniques (see below). The final gap-filled data used in this indicator is available from the EEA Data Service (http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=1058).
This base data, reported in SNAP, draft NFR or NFR are aggregated into the following EEA sector codes to obtain a common reporting format across all countries and pollutants:
The 'unallocated' sector corresponds to the difference between the reported national total and the sum of the reported sectors for a given pollutant / country / year combination. It can be either negative or positive. Inclusion of this additional sector means that the officially reported national totals do not require adjustment to ensure that they are consistent with the sum of the individual sectors reported by countries.
The following table shows the conversion of Nomenclature for Reporting (NFR) sector codes used for reporting by countries into EEA sector codes:
EEA classification NFR Emission Source Category 0 National totals National total 1 Energy Industries 1A1 3 Industry (energy) 1A2 2 Fugitive emissions 1B 7 Road transport 1A3b 8 Other transport (non-road mobile machinery) 1A3 (exl 1A3b) 9 Industry processes 2 4 Agriculture 4 + 5B 5 Waste 6 6 Other (energy) 1A4a, 1A4b, 1A4b(i), 1A4c(i), 1A5a 10 Other (non-energy) 3 + 7 12 Energy industries (power and heat production) 1A1a 14 Unallocated Difference between national total and sum of sectors (1 - 10)
To allow trend analysis, where countries have not reported data for one or more years, data in the 'EEA aggregated and gap-filled air emission dataset' has been interpolated to derive the emissions for the missing year or years. If the reported data is missing either at the beginning or at the end of the period, the emission value is assumed to equal the first or last reported value. The use of gap-filling may lead to artificial trends, but it is considered necessary if a comprehensive and comparable set of emissions data for European countries is to be obtained. A spreadsheet containing a record of the gap-filled data is available from EEA's European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change (ETC/ACC) (http://air-climate.eionet.europa.eu/)
No methodology references available.
The lead inventory is more uncertain than SO2 and NOx inventories, and the certainty of the emissions varies over the time-series as different source sectors dominate at different times due to the very significant reductions in emissions from the key sources in 1990, notably road transport. From the key sources in 1990, the lead emission estimates were based on measured concentrations of lead in the fuels, which were tightly regulated prior to being phased out in the late 1990s. This gives a high confidence in the estimates for those sources of fuel combustion which dominated in the early 1990s, but are now much reduced. In the more recent years, the level of emissions is estimated to be very much lower, and derived from a smaller number of sources. The metal processing industries are mainly regulated under IPPC and hence the estimates provided by plant operators are based on emission measurements or emission factors that have been researched for the specific process type, and hence are likely to be quite certain. The emissions from other smaller-scale combustion and process sources from industrial and commercial activities are less well documented and the estimates are based on emission factors that are less certain.
References
No uncertainty has been specified
Work specified here requires to be completed within 1 year from now.
Work specified here will require more than 1 year (from now) to be completed.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/eea32-heavy-metal-hm-emissions or scan the QR code.
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