A time-dependent global cycling model consisting of five reservoirs has been developed to examine the effects of the anthropogenic mobilization of mercury. An unpolluted steady state was perturbed by allowing the mercury efflux from the land to the atmosphere to increase with time, in line with trends implied from mercury in Greenland ice cores and present day fluxes. The results showed that with a variety of initial conditions the atmospheric content increased by a factor of about 6 with a maximum concentration occurring some 700 years after the perturbation. The ocean surface increased by about 50% over the same time scale and both these biologically important reservoirs relaxed to new steady states in about 4000 years. The sensitivity of the model to changes in some of the important rates was investigated.