featureem Paul Randall leads engineering research in the development of mercury risk mitigation and containment strategies and water decontamination research for EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, OH. He also provides technical support to Kazakhstan scientists through the U.S. State Department. Mikhail Ilyushchenko, Evgeny Lapshin, and Larissa Kuzmenko are with Almaty Institute of Power Engineering and Telecommunications, Almaty, Kazakhstan. E-mail:
[email protected]. Another example and the subject of this article is the mercury pollution at a chemical facility near the city of Pavlodar. Pavlodar is located in the northeastern part of the republic of Kazakhstan (near Semey) and situated on the Irtysh River. It has a population of more than 330,000 people. The Pavlodar Chemical Plant is contaminated with mercury as a result of industrial activity that produced chlo- rine and alkali during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Studies have identified significant amounts of mercury pollution in the soil, water, and sediments. Organic mercury com- pounds, particularly methylmercury, are present in the sedi- ments. Methylmercury rather than inorganic mercury is bioconcentrated because organisms at various levels of the food chain better retain it. In particular, high levels of this compound were found in fish from Lake Balkyldak, which is located adjacent to the Pavlodar Chemical Plant. The mercury enters Lake Balkyldak as a result of soluble The Pavlodar Plant is Kazakhstan is located in Central Asia, contaminated with mercury bordered on the north by Russia; on the east by China; on as a result of industrial the south by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan; and activity during the 1970s, on the west by the Caspian Sea and Russia (see Figure 1).