The news out of the science world today is surprising. Not that there is less mercury in oil than in coal that seemed fairly obvious. What is surprising is that no one really studied this before now. I find that fact almost unbelievable. And so another mystery is resolved.
Excerpts from ScienceDaily follow; (Yeah, I rechecked the date on this, it is current not from the 1980s).
A 4-year study of mercury in crude oil refined in the United States has found that, of the two major sources of U.S. fossil energy mined coal and crude oil crude oil contains much less toxic mercury, on average, than coal.
[...]
Coal-fired power plants released about 48 tons of mercury annually, according to U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, a figure that would drop to 15 tons annually with implementation of new clean air regulations.
However, the amount of mercury present in crude oil, and thus potentially released into the air in automobile exhaust and other sources, remained uncertain due to a lack of accurate mercury concentration data for the wide range of crude oils produced domestically and imported into the U. S., the study noted.
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