12. Beryllium behavior in the environment

Pollution limits vary from country to country, but the orders of magnitude remain roughly the same (table 11 ).

In the various receiving media [27] , beryllium behaves as follows:

• in aquatic environments: in water, beryllium is almost exclusively absorbed by ultrafine mineral particles. However, in acidic environments, it can pass into solution, reducing the self-purification capacity of water at concentrations of 0.01 mg/L and above. This phenomenon results in high levels of toxicity for fish and micro-organisms;

• in the atmosphere: beryllium migrates into the atmosphere through...