What Must Be Done

That POPs have become widespread environmental contaminants is abundantly clear from the presence of many POPs in animal and human tissues in both industrialised and industrialising countries as well in remote areas such as the Arctic and deep oceans. Currently, this problem of global POPs contamination is set to continue because the majority of POPs from man's activities are still being released into the environment.

Only a few have been banned and even this is in limited parts of the world. Furthermore, the decrease in environmental levels of a few banned POPs, such as some of the chlorinated pesticides, gives no room for optimism or complacency. Levels of banned POPs are still high enough to be of concern, and moreover, levels of other POPs which are still being widely produced, such as dioxins and the brominated flame retardants, add to the already heavy environmental burden of POPs.

Many POPs are passed from a mother's body to the developing young in wildlife and humans alike. This intergenerational transfer of POPs threatens the health of future populations. In addition, there may be many other POPs in breast milk, which have not yet been studied.

Because the release of POPs into the environment is continuing, there is a potential for further severe impacts on the health of wildlife and humans. Continuing uses of brominated flame-retardants, for instance, could lead to devastating effects on wildlife similar to those caused by PCBs. Problems may even worsen as the number and quantity of chemicals produced is increasing and most chemicals currently in use have never been tested to assess their potential hazards.

Given the persistent nature of POPs, there is only one way forward to safeguard future generations. This is to phase out the production and use of all POPs and other hazardous substances and implement clean production technologies. Action must be taken now to address the existing POPs problems, prevent new problems and start on the road to a Toxics Free Future.

To achieve this will require acceptance of much greater responsibility for the chemicals we, as society, produce and use. The bulk of this responsibility must, ultimately, be borne by those who profit from the manufacture and/or marketing of chemicals or the processes that generate them.

In addition, ongoing and further development of regional and global Conventions, and the transposition of these commitments into national law, will be necessary to implement and enforce legislation to phase out POPs and hazardous chemicals.

CLEAN DESTRUCTION TECHNOLOGIES

The following is taken from the report: Technical Criteria for Destruction of Stockpiled Persistent Organic Pollutants, 1998. Read the full report in pdf format here

Governments of the world are currently negotiating a global, legally binding instrument to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants (POPs). One important way these pollutants enter the general environment is by escaping from stores, stocks and environmental reservoirs (including contaminated soils and sediments) of obsolete POPs chemicals (PCBs, pesticides, etc.) and of POPs-contaminated wastes (dioxins, PCBs, etc.).

There is now a growing consensus that stocks, stores and environmental reservoirs of obsolete chemicals and POPs-contaminated wastes must be rapidly identified, properly collected and properly destroyed in order to stem their continued migration into the general environment. This, in turn, opens up a debate on what constitutes proper means for the collection and destruction of these obsolete chemicals and wastes.

Greenpeace has concluded that to afford adequate protection of both local and distant populations of humans and wildlife, the technologies used for destroying stockpiles of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) must meet the following fundamental performance criteria:

1. Destruction efficiencies of effectively 100 percent for the chemicals of concern. The determination of 100 percent destruction efficiency is necessarily based on findings of no detectable concentrations of the chemicals of concern in any and all residues, using the most sensitive analytical techniques available worldwide. Analyses of the unmodified residues must be carried out sufficiently frequently to ensure compliance with this criterion during startups, shutdowns and routine operations.

2. Complete containment of all residues for screening and, if necessary, reprocessing to ensure that no residues contain detectable levels of chemicals of concern or other harmful constituents, such as newly formed persistent organic pollutants or other hazardous substances.

3. No uncontrolled releases.

Combustion technologies that have historically been used to attempt the destruction of POPs stocks and POPs-contaminated materials have failed to meet these criteria. Indeed, combustion technologies themselves are identified as major sources from which POPs and other hazardous substances are released to the environment.

In recent years, several international and national agencies and organizations have evaluated other destruction technologies, some of which are now in commercial-scale operation in one or more countries. Like the combustion technologies, these newer technologies have high resource demands and may otherwise exact a toll on the environment, the safety and health of workers, and the general public that renders them unacceptable for continued, long-term use, as in the disposal of wastes from ongoing domestic and industrial activities.

Some of these newer technologies (for example, gas-phase chemical reduction) do represent a substantial qualitative improvement over combustion for the destruction of stores, stocks and environmental reservoirs of obsolete POPs chemicals and POPs-contaminated wastes. In many cases, these newer technologies, if properly implemented, represent a better alternative than a decision to incinerate or to take no action and wait for a better POPs destruction technology to emerge.

GREENPEACE DEMANDS ...

The production and use of all POPs must be phased out at national, as well as international and, ultimately, at a global level.

This must be achieved through the substitution of POPs (or the processes which generate them) with non-hazardous alternatives.

Industry and agriculture must pursue clean production technologies and manufacture clean products, recognising that the only way to prevent releases of POPs into the environment is to avoid their production and use.

As a matter of urgency, action must be taken to stop production, eliminate all discharges, emissions and losses of those chemicals prioritised for action by regional governments and the UNEP, many of which are POPs.

Presume that all chemicals are hazardous until demonstrated otherwise, i.e. until hazard identification is completed, or in those instances where hazard identification is limited by lack of information, chemicals must be assumed to present hazards of unknown proportions.

Ultimately, measures to eliminate releases of POPs and other hazardous substances to the environment will need to be taken not just on a regional but on a global basis, because chemical contamination of the environment is a global problem and chemicals do not respect national boundaries.

OSPAR countries therefore should not only give highest priority to implement the one generation elimination goal of all hazardous substances in Europe, but also aim at this elimination goal at the global level through the UNEP convention for the elimination of POPs.

This is an essential first step if the target of cessation of emissions, discharges and losses of ALL hazardous substances as agreed at ministerial level in OSPAR countries, is to be achieved within one generation (by 2020) in the OSPAR countries as well as globally in order to reach a toxic free future.

 

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