Global Agreement On Cutting Mercury Pollution

Mercury is one of many ways we're polluting our environment.

It may seem like somebody else's problem, seeing as it's mainly a developing world issue, but it's increasingly everyone's problem.

Those coal fired power stations we still use to generate electric spew it out constantly because coal is often contaminated with it. There's so much mercury working it's way into our oceans from various human activities that the concentration of it has doubled over the last 100 years. As a result, it's working it's way up the food chain and into the fish we eat.

Mercury leads to birth defects, poisons our nervous systems, guts, kidneys and lungs, and can even kill.

So it makes sense to limit it.

And that's just what 140 countries have negotiated through the U.N. (More here).