Anyone know where this Mercury is coming from ?

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Perplexed

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The sources are listed in the PDF linked to in the article:

http://www.deq.state.ok.us/CSDnew/fish/PDFs/2017_MercuryinFish.pdf

When we did some work at McGee Creek Reservoir some years back, we did find elevated levels of mercury in fish and sediment samples collected from around the lake. Enough that we advised DEQ to put out a public notice, and they did.
 
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steelfingers

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Coal mines crisscross all of Southern Oklahoma. Mercury is part of that. It's not that Mercury has suddenly been found in the water supply, it was only FIRST tested a few years ago. Suggestions from the health dept is to not eat fish more than a couple times a week.
It's always been in the water here. It will always be in the water here.
No big deal. Most of the folks that die around these parts under 80 is said to have died too young.
Ha.
 

Master Carper

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Working in conjunction with the GRDA several years back, we located several leaking 55 gallon drums sitting on the bottom of the lake, that contained some very nasty chemicals, which also included high level traces of mercury. 1 - drum could pollute literally hundreds of surface acres, but the pollutants were heavy enough to stay closer to the bottom, and as such, catfish were found to have the highest concentration of mercury in their system. It has been a few years since I have seen an updated report, but there were over 20 lakes that have been affected by this.
 

emapples

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Coal mines crisscross all of Southern Oklahoma. Mercury is part of that. It's not that Mercury has suddenly been found in the water supply, it was only FIRST tested a few years ago. Suggestions from the health dept is to not eat fish more than a couple times a week.
It's always been in the water here. It will always be in the water here.
No big deal. Most of the folks that die around these parts under 80 is said to have died too young.
Ha.

Mercury , Lead, and Hex Chrome are three things I don't like it he environment. Not even sure if We use her chrome like we used to, I know for a fact most of the plating companies are gone. Taking Chrome out of waste water was a relatively easy process a little oh adjustment and some ferrous sulfate
 

Shadowrider

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Taking Chrome out of waste water was a relatively easy process a little oh adjustment and some ferrous sulfate

It's a bit more involved than a pH adjustment and adding iron. Hexavalent chromium is water soluble at all pH levels, that's what makes it so dangerous. I used to oversee this in an aerospace finishing shop. We used sodium metabisulphite and sulphuric acid for the conversion, lots of lime and sodium hydroxide to bring the pH level back to sane levels. To do the conversion you have to take the pH down below 2.2 or it doesn't work well. To remove it from water you have to convert it to trivalent chrome an then it will solidify and drop out. Remove the water from the solid sediment, pH adjust it and it's good to dump. Then you have to deal with the trivalent, but it's not anywhere near as nasty as hex we ran through a filter press and shipped it off to a certified landfill.

It can also be removed by vacuum distillation but the equipment is very expensive.
 

emapples

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It's a bit more involved than a pH adjustment and adding iron. Hexavalent chromium is water soluble at all pH levels, that's what makes it so dangerous. I used to oversee this in an aerospace finishing shop. We used sodium metabisulphite and sulphuric acid for the conversion, lots of lime and sodium hydroxide to bring the pH level back to sane levels. To do the conversion you have to take the pH down below 2.2 or it doesn't work well. To remove it from water you have to convert it to trivalent chrome an then it will solidify and drop out. Remove the water from the solid sediment, pH adjust it and it's good to dump. Then you have to deal with the trivalent, but it's not anywhere near as nasty as hex we ran through a filter press and shipped it off to a certified landfill.

It can also be removed by vacuum distillation but the equipment is very expensive.

My apologies, it's been 8 years since I did this sort of thing....Sodium Metabisulfite, sodium Hydrosulfite (nasty stuff) are used to convert(i amsure there are other sulfite you could use) ferrous sulfate may have been used as the flocculant even, alum or polymers were used for speed, water went through a filter press then trivalent sludge went to a landfill or a recycler but I don't think recycling was efficient enough to ever catch on.

I believe Total sold Atotech last year, to Carlyle for a pretty penny. That's an industry that's sort of like Kodak film (not as bad as Kodak film) but it's still a diminishing industry with far fewer people plating these days. Aircraft is likely the biggest market for plating in general ....thought business
 

dennishoddy

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Guess there isn't much you can do if it leaches from the rocks , but I thought we treated vent stacks for mercury?

I worked in a coal burner for almost 16 years. Part of the job was monitoring EPA stack emissions.
During Obamas reign of terror, we were mandated to monitor stack gas for mercury.
We were selected to be a beta test plant. We spent millions of dollars and thousands of man hours setting up the latest equipment available and tested for over a year. The amount of mercury emitted from our stacks was so tiny that the test equipment couldn't reliably pick up enough samples to see if we actually were putting it out or not.
EPA said to mothball the testing and they would get back to us. Never did until I retired a couple of years later.
 

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