Mercury Deposition Monitoring in Kansas

KSA 75-5673 required that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) establish a statewide mercury deposition network consisting of at least six monitoring sites. Monitoring for a period of time long enough to determine trends is also specified.

The network has been designed to assure compatibility with the national Mercury Deposition Network (MDN). The MDN, coordinated through the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), is designed to study and quantify the atmospheric fate and deposition of mercury. The MDN collects weekly samples of wet deposition (rain and snow) for analysis to determine total mercury.  More information about the MDN can be found at http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/mdn/.

Sampling at all sites is performed on a weekly basis, with sample retrieval every Tuesday. All samples are sent to a national contract laboratory utilized by the MDN.

Mercury in the Environment

Mercury (Hg) is a metal which is emitted into the environment from a variety of sources, both man-made and natural. These include coal fired electrical generating units, burning of hazardous, solid and medical wastes, mining of gold, breakage of products containing mercury, and the improper disposal of products or wastes containing mercury. Mercury can be emitted as a vapor or attached to a particle. It is transported through the atmosphere and deposited on land and into bodies of water, which can lead to contamination of soil, water and sediments within lakes, streams and marshlands.

Mercury deposition values represent the amount of mercury deposited by precipitation on each square meter of ground at the sampling site. The deposition numbers are important because they provide estimates (weekly, monthly and annual) of the amount of mercury loaded onto the surface of the earth in the vicinity of each sampling site. It is a portion of this mercury which enters bodies of water and, after reacting to form methyl mercury, can enter the food chain through aquatic systems.

Description of the Kansas Mercury Wet Deposition Network

The complete Kansas Mercury Wet Deposition Monitoring Network (KMDN) consists of six sites distributed across the state. The locations of existing and future sites in Nebraska and Oklahoma were also taken into consideration to optimize regional mercury network coverage.

Each site was chosen to meet particular criteria. Specific regional and local site criteria must be met before any site is accepted into the national MDN. A major consideration, at both the state and national levels, was relatively even distribution of monitoring sites across Kansas. Mercury deposition sampling locations in Oklahoma and Nebraska also affected placement of samplers in the network.

Kansas Mercury Deposition Network and
Monitoring Sites in Nebraska and Oklahoma

National MDN Data

National mercury data are summarized for each year by calculating the annual values from each site and plotting the information on a national map. The Kansas sites will begin to appear on the 2008 maps, which will be issued by September 2009. It is expected that all six Kansas sites will have collected enough data to appear on the 2009 maps, which are scheduled for publication by September 2010. A set of these MDN maps, dating back to 1998, can be found at http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/data/.

Kansas Deposition Data for 2008

All currently available data from the KMDN appears below. Preliminary data was obtained through December 2008. The four sites that were operational before the end of October are included, with the data set for each site beginning with the first month of operation. This “raw” data may contain some values that could later be invalidated, but little change is expected and general conclusions can be made.

Kansas Mercury Wet Deposition Data (Preliminary):  Jan. – Dec. 2008   (ug/m² per month)

Kansas Deposition Data for 2009

All currently available data from the KMDN appears below. Preliminary data has been obtained through May 2009. This “raw” data may contain some values that could later be invalidated, but little change is expected and general conclusions can be made.

Kansas Mercury Wet Deposition Data (Preliminary): Jan. – May 2009   (ug/m² per month)