수은에 대한 물질흐름분석 및 인체 위해성평가

장은실¹, 김경환¹, 황윤영¹, 허탁¹

Substance Flow Analysis of Mercury and Human Risk Assessment

Eun Sil Jang¹, Kyung Hwan Kim¹, Yoon Yung Hwang¹, Tak Hur¹

¹건국대학교 신소재공학과

¹Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Konkuk University

ⓒ Copyright 2011 The Korea Society for Life Cycle Assessment. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Sep 30, 2011

Abstract

Concerned about the harmful effects of mercury on human, the flows of mercury need to be analyzed to trace where it is used and decide how to manage it. In the study the substance flows of mercury are identified through the SFA (Substance Flow Analysis) and the effects of mercury on human are examined using HRA (Human Risk Assessment).

The MFA study shows that the total consumption of mercury in 2009 is reduced by 42%, compared to 2000. It is used mainly in lighting appliances such as HID (High-Intensity Discharge) lamp, fluorescent lamp, and cold cathode fluorescent lamp. It is mainly input to construction and electronic & electricity industry and waste mercury is recovered from descarded lighting appliances. At present, however, the collected mercury from the discarded products is disposed because of technical and economical difficulties. In the past the domestic demand of mercury was much larger than now and thus, the environmental emission of mercury is mainly from the 'manufacturing' stage. On the other hand, at present proper management of waste mercury becomes critical, since recently the demand of mercury decreases significantly and at the same time the increased amounts of mercury containing products are discarded.

The HRA is carried out to examine the probability and likely-hood of hazardous impact of mercury to human for each region. The disposal plant of mercury-containing products shows much higher potential risks on human than more populated place with high consumption of mercury-containing products. It is due to that the amounts of discarded products with contain mercury increase, while the amounts of new mercury-containing products decrease because of international regulations. Thus, the management of waste mercury is critical in order to reduce the risks of mercury to human. In addition, the amounts of mercury emission are analyzed for 16 cities/provinces in Korea using the factors which consider the characteristics of different mercury containing products. Human exposure assessment is performed. considering the amount of mercury exposed by air inhaled and water intake. The results of risk characterization show that the most harmful place for human risk is different from the place with the largest amount of mercury emission.