Taiwan stages 12th APMMN annual meeting

2023/07/14

The Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration conducted the 12th annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network July 12 in Taipei City, underscoring the government’s commitment to helping partners develop their assessment capacity.
 
According to the EPA, the physical and virtual event was attended by 50-plus academics and officials from Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, Palau, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, the Maldives, the Philippines, the U.S. and the U.N. Environment Programme.
 
The meeting featured opening remarks by EPA Deputy Minister Wang Ya-fen, as well as a prerecorded speech by Jane Nishida, assistant administrator of the Office of International and Tribal Affairs under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the administration said, adding that attendees also shared the current mercury monitoring situation in their respective countries.
 
These included representatives from the EPA’s Toxic and Chemical Substances Bureau, who detailed Taiwan’s implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, and David Gay, coordinator of the U.S. National Atmospheric Deposition Program, who spoke about mercury management measures in North America.
 
The participants were also invited to visit Taiwan’s environmental monitoring centers and laboratories to attend training on mercury wet deposition sampling and analysis, the EPA added.
 
Jointly launched by Taiwan and the U.S. in 2012, APMMN is a cooperative effort to systematically monitor mercury in the air and rainwater throughout the Asia-Pacific. The network involves academic institutions, environmental ministries and government agencies, as well as scientific research and monitoring organizations.
 
Taiwan has aided APMMN member states in establishing 13 mercury wet deposition samplers and helped analyze over 1,450 rainwater samples, according to the EPA. 


Source: Taiwan Today (https://taiwantoday.tw/index.php)