400 UN Delegates Debate Global Ban On Organic Pollutants
More than 400 delegates from at least 100 countries are meeting this week at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP; Nairobi, Kenya; (+) 41-22-979-9111), headquarters to debate a ban on chemicals known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); these include the pesticide DDT. Representatives of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund are the main proponents of the treaty, which may be finalized by 2000.
Treaty Background
Why POPs Are Dangerous
Targeted Chemicals
Treaty Background (Back to Top)
The Second Session of the United Nation's POP Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee began Jan. 25, 1999, and will last five days. POPs were developed early in the century to control diseases, increase food production, and improve the standard of living. Over time, many of these have been found to threaten biodiversity and human health.
"They harm the ecological support system on which life depends," says UNEP deputy director Shafqat Kakakhel. "They accumulate, move from food chain to food chain, and concentrate even in the largest animal species like polar bears and whales."
Addressing the conference on its opening day, Kakakhel called for a global ban on POPs and said no country or individual is safe from POP contamination. He said that he expects the Nairobi meeting, which followed a series of talks that began in Montreal in 1998, to end in a legally binding blueprint by 2000.
"At this point, work on this treaty is on target and on time, a treaty by the year 2000 is challenging, but reachable as long as there are resources to get the job done," Kakakhel says.
The proposed agreement is being pushed mainly by environmental groups like Greenpeace and WWF. It grows from five previous agreements that increased pressure for a worldwide ban on POPs. The most recent of the agreements is the 1998 Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, which provides importing countries with a more informed basis for deciding which chemicals to accept or reject. It requires chemical traders to label shipments with information on potential health and environmental hazards.
Other significant agreements include the UN Economic Commission for Europe's Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) that was ratified in 1998; the 1993 Global London Convention on ocean dumping; and the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes. The Basel Convention agreement was later amended to ban exports of such wastes.
Why POPs Are Dangerous (Back to Top)
Research has shown that POPs, which affect human beings through water and food contamination and to a lesser extent through inhalation and skin contact, are major carcinogens. They also create disfunctional endocrine systems, thereby interfering with the body's hormones.
The chemicals are not soluble in water, so they are readily absorbed in the body's fat tissue where they accumulate and remain unbroken, says Peter Oris, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Illinois, School of Public Health (Champaign-Urbana).
The concentrations may be hundreds of times higher in the human body than they are anywhere else in the environment, he says. In women, Oris says, the contamination accumulates in the breast cells and uterus and is then passed on to infants. This leads to abnormal births.
Targeted Chemicals (Back to Top)
Groups negotiating the agreement target 12 chemicals for urgent total banning, although they urge restrictions on a number of organic chemicals, according to Romeo Quijano of the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), which includes some 130 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world.
The 12 chemicals on the banning list include eight pesticides, two industrial chemicals, two families of manufacturing byproducts, and chlorine and chlorine-containing materials such as dioxins and furans. These chemicals are restricted in most countries. In others, their use is still widespread, according to a delegate at the talks.
DDT tops the list of targeted chemicals. Although DDT is banned in many countries, it is still in widespread use in other parts of the world. Quijano said that abandoned and obsolete chemical stockpiles in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union continue to pose hazards to the environment and human health.
Some delegates oppose the elimination of DDT, which is still in use in more than 20 countries, because of its major role in combating malaria and other insect-borne diseases. Malaria threatens approximately 2.5 billion people in more than 90 countries and contributes to at least three million deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization.
For more information, call (+) 41-22-979-9111 or e-mail jwillis@unep.ch.