Summary of Supply, Trade and Demand Information on Mercury

Despite an apparent quantity of publicly available data, much of the world mercury market is private, and some of it is illegal. This adds an additional element of uncertainty even to those commercial mercury flows we believe we understand. This report demonstrates that increased scrutiny of mercury trade flows by national authorities worldwide – even if it involves only a closer inspection of statistics already collected – would bring us rapidly closer to a more effective control of the global mercury problem.