Taiwan EPA, US EPA and the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources jointly hosted the seventh annual partnership meeting of the Asia-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network (APMMN) from September 5^th to 7^th in Manila, the Philippines. The three-day event brought together more than 70 experts and scholars from 18 different countries to exchange information on status of mercury in air and rainfall.

However, this year, the meeting was preceded by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s workshop on atmospheric mercury monitoring to provide atmospheric mercury monitoring technology for APMMN partner countries.

During the APMMN meeting, Sri Lanka proposed one monitoring site for atmospheric mercury wet deposition sampling and was willing to establish two more monitoring sites. Nepal also expressed a high degree of interest in joining APMMN and has provided relevant documents for reference after the meeting. In addition, the new APMMN official website was also shown at the conference.

Mr. Yueh-bin Wang, Deputy General-Director with the Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management at Taiwan EPA, stated at the opening ceremony that Taiwan will share its mercury analysis technologies and its experience in building environmental monitoring centers with the meeting participants.