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65 珧鳶腔?尥頗婖傖僖拹? ENVIRONMENT REPORT September 7, 2001: Mercury Pollution in WildfiresBy George Grow ㄗStart at 59 ㄘThis is Bill White with the VOA Special English ENVIRONMENT REPORT. (1)Wildfires have been burning in forests in parts of the western United States this summer. American scientists are studying the effect of the wildfires on the (2)environment. Some scientists have flown over the fires to measure the levels of the chemical (3)element (4)mercury in the smoke. The National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Washington are organizing the flights. Scientists want to understand what causes mercury to form in Earths (5)atmosphere. They also want to learn how much of the chemical falls on the land and water and enters the food supply. High levels of mercury are (6)poisonous to people and animals. During a wildfire, mercury stored in trees and on the ground is released and carried into the atmosphere. Mercury travels as a gas in the atmosphere for about a year before landing in water or on the ground. About six-thousand (7)metric tons of mercury are in the atmosphere at any one time. About half the mercury in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, such as oceans, soil and (8)volcanoes. The other half comes from human activities. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that American coal-burning factories release about thirty-seven metric tons of the chemical each year. Mercury changes in the atmosphere through chemical processes. It returns to Earths surface in wet or dry particles. Hans Friedli is a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He says trees store mercury in their leaves or (9)needles. It stays there until the trees burn. The scientists carried out tests to find out how much mercury is released during a forest fire. For the (10)experiment, researchers gathered trees from across the United States. They burned the trees at the Forest Service Fire Science (11)Laboratory in Mis