Over the past 100 years, mercury concentrations have doubled in the top layer of the world’s oceans. That’s why more than 140 governments meeting at a United Nations forum in Geneva, including the U.S., China and India, have agreed to a global, legally-binding treaty to address mercury, a notorious heavy metal with significant health and environmental effects.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury – named after a city in Japan where serious health damage occurred as a result of mercury pollution in the mid-20th Century – provides controls and reductions across a range of products, processes and industries where mercury is used, released or emitted.