2 - Contribution from the health-care sector and Regulation
Health-care facilities are one of the main sources of mercury release into the atmosphere because of emissions from the incineration of medical waste. The Environment Minister of the Canadian province of Ontario declared on December 2002 that emissions from incinerators were the fourth-largest source of mercury. In the United States, according to US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a 1997 report (http://www.epa.gov/ttncaaa1/t3/reports/volume2.pdf), medical waste incinerators may have been responsible for as much as 10% of all mercury air releases