Summary
Mercury (Hg) is a toxic trace element that represents a critical environmental problem across Europe, with large socio-economic, environmental and public health impacts. Being considered a strong neurotoxic agent, the World Health Organization has placed Hg among the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern. Environmental emissions of Hg have increased significantly over the last century due to anthropogenic activities such as mining, industrial processes, and fossil fuel combustion, resulting in a threefold increase in Hg levels in surface marine waters compared to pre-anthropogenic conditions. Decades of industrial Hg waste inputs have posed a significant environmental and health threat worldwide, primarily due to one of its organic forms, monomethylmercury (MeHg), a neurotoxin that accumulates and biomagnifies in aquatic food webs, being MeHg-contaminated fish and seafood the primary route of human exposure to Hg. This talk will review current understanding of mercury sources and transformations in marine environments, and present new insights into previously unquantified sources and overlooked hotspots of mercury methylation.
Brief biography
Since June 2024, I am a Scientific Researcher (Investigador Científico) at ICM-CSIC, where I lead an interdisciplinary and innovative research group focused on global mercury biogeochemistry, with particular emphasis on the formation of toxic methylmercury. I earned my PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Geneva (2010), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Swedish Research Council at Uppsala University (2012–2014), investigating the role of organic matter in mercury methylation. My postdoctoral work continued in Sweden at Uppsala University (2014–2016) and Umeå University (2017), before returning to Spain with a Beatriu de Pinós fellowship at IDAEA-CSIC to study key organic molecules involved in methylmercury formation. I later joined ICM-CSIC through a Marie Curie Fellowship (Mer-Cure), focusing on biological mercury cycling in marine systems. This work expanded under a Ramón y Cajal contract and a Plan Nacional JIN project, exploring submarine groundwater discharge as a source of mercury and identifying unveiled microbial methylators. Currently, with a dynamic team of early-career researchers, we investigate the mechanisms of methylmercury formation and degradation across redox gradients in diverse environments.