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By Beth Daley, Globe Staff and Janaki Kremmer, Globe Correspondent India, The Boston Globe

The cargo marks the first shipment of the 260,000 pounds of mercury that until recently sat in a shuttered chemical plant in Orrington, Maine one of the largest such stockpiles in America. It first attracted attention last fall when Maine Governor Angus King, prompted by public concern about the health risks of mercury exposure, asked the federal government to take the mercury off the market and mothball it.

His request was denied. The mercury was sold to an Illinois-based metals company, which resold it to the Indian factories that use mercury to make thermometers, fluorescent lights bulbs, and other products.

Now, after Indian environmental groups began denouncing the shipment as "toxic trade", longshoremen in India say they are on the lookout for the metal and will refuse to unload it.

As the story spreads through the Indian media, even government officials say they are unsure what to do.

"Such a large consignment [of mercury] has not been seen here since 1996," said Dr. Indrani Chandrashekharan, director of the Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi. "We have alerted Customs. There are many people who feel that we should not even allow the mercury to land."

The controversy highlights the peculiar status of mercury, a naturally occurring metal that can behave as a neurotoxin in certain forms, and can harm fetuses if it is ingested by pregnant women. However, it remains legal to buy, sell, and use in industry.

In the past few years, environmental mercury has become a hot-button issue in the United States. Mercury, in part, enters the air as a byproduct of coal-burning power plants, and then builds up in lakes, rivers, and freshwater fish from thousands of miles away. The Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that it will begin regulating mercury emissions from power plants. The sale of household mercury thermometers was banned in Boston last year and Governor Paul Cellucci is expected to introduce legislation to ban the sale statewide. New Hampshire has a ban, and Maine is considering a similar step.

About a dozen factories in the United States, however, still possess multi-ton mercury caches like the one in Maine. Before it closed in September, the Orrington plant used mercury in a chemical process to help the produce chlorine; many similar plants are closing or converting to mercury-free process, leaving the question open as to what will happen to all the stored mercury.

But in India, one the world's most active mercury industrial centers, chlor-alkali plants are still common. So are thermometer factories: In fact, the world's largest mercury-thermometer manufacturer is in India.

Environmental activists look at the movement of the Maine mercury stockpile an amount larger than the total US export of mercury in 1998 and 1999 combined and see a Western country dumping a dangerous substance on an underdeveloped country that can't handle it safely.

"It constitutes a clear case of toxic trade," said Nityanand Jayaraman, an environmental activist in India, "where a country that knows the dangers of mercury and is taking action to get out of the mercury trap has no problems exporting the problem to India."

"We need an international policy to phase out the use of mercury," said Michael Belliveau, toxics project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, who wants the mercury to be stockpiled in the United States. "That's really the problem. Maine doesn't want this mercury, the US doesn't want this mercury, and now we're dumping it on a poor undeveloped country."

Despite the heat India officials are getting over the shipment, even environmentalists say refusing entry could cause problems because mercury is not illegal and so many industries use the substance.

"If they do try and stop it, it becomes a whole different ballgame, because we are talking of a commodity that in itself it toxic, but possibly not illegal," said Ravi Agarwal, chief coordinator of Shrishti, or Creation, a New Delhi environmental group that analyzes toxic and hazardous waste.

Still, Agarwal would prefer that the mercury not enter the country. "If the importer can't sell it all right away, then it has to be stored," he said. "How will it be stored? It's a huge amount to arrive at once. And once it arrives on our shores, it becomes de facto dumping."

The Illinois company exporting the mercury, D.F. Goldsmith Chemical & Metal Corp., was unapologetic. Don Goldsmith said he is only trading a legal metal.

"It is a commodity," he said. "And if they didn't get it from us, they would get it from a mining company. You could look [at] it as we are not adding to the total world supply because we are recycling it. There is no dumping; this is being sold at market price all over the world."