You are here:
IRIS Summary Update (2001) and EPA Guidelines for Methylmercury (2009 & 2010)
Citation:
IRIS Summary Update (2001) and EPA Guidelines for Methylmercury (2009 & 2010).
Impact/Purpose:
This final Guidance for Implementing the January 2001 Methylmercury Water Quality Criterion provides technical guidance to states and authorized tribes on how they may want to use the January 2001 fish tissue-based recommended water quality criterion for methylmercury in surface water protection programs (e.g., TMDLs, NPDES permitting). The guidance addresses questions related to water quality standards adoption (e.g., site-specific criteria, variances), assessments, monitoring, TMDLs, and NPDES permitting. The guidance consolidates existing EPA guidance where relevant to mercury.
Description:
In January 2001, U.S. EPA finalized the guidance for methylmercury in the Water Quality Criterion for the Protection of Human Health: Methylmercury, Final for states and authorized tribes.
Then eight years later, EPA released new guidance under the Methylmercury Implementation Guidance, but the following year the previous Obama Administration asked EPA to confirm the continued appropriateness and applicability of several agency actions, including this guidance. Therefore, based on the outcome of this review, in April 2010, EPA improved the document's clarity, and as a result, the ability of states and tribes to protect public health from methylmercury impacts by issuing a 2010 update, but this did not change the fundamental policy recommendations from the original January 2009 document.
URLs/Downloads:
IRIS Summary for Methylmercury (PDF, 43 pp, 260 KB, about PDF)Methylmercury Implementation Guidance (Updated Apr 2010)
Methylmercury Implementation Guidance (January 2009)
Water Quality Criterion for the Protection of Human Health: Methylmercury, Final 2001 (PDF, 308 pp, 779993 KB, about PDF)
Response to Comments of the Peer Review Panel and Public Comments on Methylmercury (PDF, 23 pp, 77 KB, about PDF)
EPA's Website on Human Health Criteria - Methylmercury
Fact Sheet: 2001 Final Methylmercury Criteria