The Third International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant was convened in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, in July 1994.

The 151 papers in this volume are the proceedings of that conference.

The apparent general increase of mercury in the global environment has highlighted the potential importance of anthropogenic mercury emissions.

Environmental cycling of mercury leads to its bioaccumulation in the human food chain.

The amount and toxicity of mercury in human foods is controlled by complex ecological and biogeochemical processes.

The Conference objectives were to integrate and synthesize current knowledge and to identify the information needs for the development of assessment frameworks.

To these ends, the state of the science, integration of ecological and health studies, and the research - policy interface were explored in technical presentations on human health, ecological effects, emissions, biogeochemistry, analytical chemistry, and modeling. (R. A.).