by Jack Weinberg

I wish to thank the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) for the invitation to attend and address this important Asia and Pacific Regional Workshop on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). I also wish to thank my hosts in the Government of Thailand and want you to know how much I am enjoying my opportunity to visit this delightful city. My remarks today are on behalf of Greenpeace International, but they also reflect views that are widely shared by many public interest NGOs concerned about the environment and/or public health as well as large numbers of other citizen and community-based organizations.

POPs, as you all know, are organic (carbon-based) chemical compounds and mixtures with the following properties:

1) POPs are highly toxic. They can injure human health and the environment at very low concentrations. In some cases, a single POPs molecule can attach to a receptor site in a cell and trigger a cascade of effects.

 

2) POPs persist in the environment. They resist photolytic, chemical and biological degradation.

3) POPs have low water solubility and high lipid (fat) solubility. They bioaccumulate in fatty tissues of living organisms. In the environment, their concentrations can magnify by factors of many thousands as POPs work their way up the food chain.

 

4) POPs are semi-volatile. They can be carried long distances on air and water currents or by other means and may be subject to global distillation (i.e. migration from warmer to colder regions).

 

5) POPs are widely distributed across the earth. POPs can travel to regions that are far distant from their source, and at these distant locations POPs can concentrate in biota to levels with the potential to injure human health and/or the environment.

 

POPs are products and by-products of human industry that are of relatively recent origin. In the early decades of this century, most POPs were virtually non-existent in our environment. Significant production and generation of POPs began in the years following World War II and now, both people and wildlife, everywhere in the world, carry body burdens of POPs at or near levels that can -- and often do -- cause injury to human health and to entire ecosystems.

Populations of both humans and wildlife have been injured by these toxic pollutants in locations with nearby sources and also in locations where virtually all the POPs in the region have arrived from sources thousands of kilometers away, transported on air or ocean currents.

My own personal concern about POPs began in the late 1980's when scientists and researchers discovered strong evidence of injury to fish, birds and mammals in or around the Great Lakes of North America. These injuries were especially prevalent in high predator species and included:

* Reproductive failure and population decline;

* Abnormally functioning thyroids and other hormone system dysfunctions;

* Feminization of males and masculinization of females;

* Compromised immune systems;

* Behavioral abnormalities;

* Tumors and cancers;

* Gross birth defects; and others.

 

Alarmed by these findings, scientists and environmentalists began to investigate the possibility of similar injury to humans, who after all, can also be considered high predators. In the years that followed, good evidence emerged that associates human exposure to POPs with: 

* Cancers and tumors at multiple sites;

* Neurobehavioral impairment including learning disorders, reduced performance on standard tests and changes in temperament;

* Immune system dysfunction;

* Reproductive deficits and sex-linked disorders;

* A shortened period of lactation in nursing mothers.

* Diseases such as endometriosis, increased incidence of diabetes, and others.

 

People are generally exposed to POPs through their food supply although workers and residents of communities near POPs sources can also be exposed through inhalation and dermal contact. POPs exposures are often highly pronounced in peoples whose diets include large amounts of wild food and especially big fish, marine mammals and other aquatic resources. Some of the best documented, highly exposed populations are aboriginal people living in very cold climates far distant from most POPs sources. Ordinary domesticated meat and milk products, however, generally are also significantly contaminated by POPs in most regions.

In people as in wildlife, injury caused by exposure to POPs is often expressed, not in the exposed adult population, but in the offspring generation. Parental body burdens of POPs can be transferred to the developing fetus and to the young infant and can cause injury or deficits that are then expressed after the infant reaches puberty or adulthood.

Recall that vanishingly small amounts of POPs were present in the environment and in food until after the early 1950's. Recall also that human generation time is quite long. This helps us understand why evidence of human injury from POPs was so slow to emerge. And now, as this body of evidence grows at a very rapid pace -- there has also emerged a rapidly growing movement of concerned individuals, organizations and others demanding that governments take action to eliminate POPs and their sources.

Responsible people in governments are developing plans and strategies to address the POPs problem in their own country. Some have even begun to associate themselves with the growing movement of community people and organizations concerned about injury from POPs and dedicated to eliminate POPs from the planet. Governments who fail to act will, one day, be confronted by a public saying: "Even when you knew, you failed to inform us and failed to take the action needed to protect our unborn generations?"

Fortunately, intergovernmental institutions such as UNEP, the World Health Organization (WHO), the IFCS and others have responded to the outcry and have been given a mandate by the world's governments to begin work toward a global action plan. The full history of these decisions was outlined early by Dr. John Buccini of Canada. The important decision, however, and the one that brings this workshop together, was taken at the February, 1997 Governing Council Meeting of UNEP where governments agreed to convene an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on POPs. This decision was subsequently confirmed at the May, 1997 meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA, the governing body of WHO) meeting in Geneva.

The decisions by UNEP GC and WHA focus initial attention on a short list of twelve POPS: dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, chlordane, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, toxaphene, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, and mirex. In addition, the negotiators are requested to develop criteria and a procedure for identifying additional POPs as candidates for future binding global action.

The UNEP decision to convene a POPs INC includes the following elements (among others) in a broad framework document that has already been agreed by governments. (These are exact quotes.):

* "For the listed POP pesticides, measures should be taken to rapidly phase out remaining production and subsequent remaining use as alternatives are made available for the small number of remaining recognized uses."

 

* "For the listed POP industrial chemicals there is need to phase out, over time, PCBs and HCB on a global scale and, in the transition to complete elimination of use, there is need for managing remaining use, storage and disposal."

 

* "For POPs that are generated as unwanted by-products [e.g. dioxins and furans], currently available measures that can achieve a realistic and meaningful level of release reduction and/or source elimination should be pursued expeditiously, and this should be done by actions that are feasible and practical and additional measures should be explored and implemented."

 

* "Realistic action should be taken to destroy obsolete stocks of the listed POPs and remediate environmental reservoirs."

 

* "[S]ocio-economic factors should be addressed in developing and implementing international action [on POPs] including the following:

 

- "Possible impacts on food production;

 

- "Possible impacts on human health (e.g., for vector control agents);

 

- "Need for capacity-building in countries and regions;

 

- "Financing concerns and opportunities;

 

- "Possible trade impacts."

 

POPs ELIMINATION PLATFORM

Some in the chemical industry, and others, still want a global POPs convention whose goals are limited to the better management of risks associated with POPs. Greenpeace, and the broad public interest community disagree with this perspective.

POPs do not represent a "risk." POPs, rather, represent a current source of significant injury to the biosphere -- to humans, to wildlife and to entire ecosystems all over the world. Nor is the better management of POPs and POPs releases an appropriate goal for a global POPs convention. Rather, the appropriate goal is a systematic and sustained programme of action to eliminate POPs and their sources and thereby, to eliminate the injury POPs cause. (A POPs management regime should be pursued as interim measures under circumstances where POPs elimination requires an extended phase-out period.)

Greenpeace and other concerned, public interest organizations urge governments and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to establish a legally binding global Programme Of Action designed to eliminate Persistent Organic Pollutants and their anthropogenic sources based on the following principles:

1) It should be understood that the POPs Programme of Action established under a global, legally binding agreement, will primarily entail a problem solving, solutions-oriented regime. It should be acknowledged that many important countries lack the capacity, on their own, to eliminate POPs and their anthropogenic sources without significant external assistance. A meaningful POPs Elimination Agreement must include significant commitments for shared responsibility including external assistance as well as technical and other aid in capacity enhancement. The regime must also actively encourage the establishment of cost-effective and efficient means to achieve desired outcomes.

 

2) No country or region will be asked or required to take action under a POPs Agreement that is substantively harmful to the health or to the well-being of its people. Special consideration should be given to infectious disease control, necessary food production and other significant economic, social or health-related matters. Assistance will often be required to identify and help make available cost-effective alternatives to POPs and their sources, including non-chemical alternatives. A proposed alternative to a POP should not be considered appropriate or acceptable if it poses a real local or regional health or environmental threat because of its acute toxicity or other properties -- even if that alternative is itself not a POP.

3) It should be understood that achieving POPs elimination is primarily a qualitative, not a quantitative undertaking. Once a substance has been listed as a POP for purposes of the Agreement, the elimination goal -- which is a qualitative goal -- should become operative. A listed POP has no acceptable emission limit value; no acceptable daily intake, etc. (except as needed on an interim basis with clear sunset deadlines). The decision to list a substance as a POP under the global binding Programme of Action reflects an agreement to work toward elimination of the substance and its anthropogenic sources -- not an agreement to attempt to manage and control the substance's environmental releases into perpetuity.

4) For those POPs already identified as UNEP action targets --dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, chlordane, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, toxaphene, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, and mirex -- the Agreement should mandate a rapid, but orderly and responsible global program of action that, taking into account points 1 to 3 above, will:

* For those POPs intentionally produced, phase out and then ban all intentional production and intentional use and also end all import, export, transfer and sales.

 

* For those POPS that are generated as unwanted contaminants, by-products and combustion products, identify and phase-out significant anthropogenic sources. In identifying sources, consideration should be given to industrial processes, waste disposal technologies, and anthropogenic products and materials routinely associated with the generation of these POPs during their ordinary life-cycle.

 

* For obsolete POPs stocks and environmental POPs reservoirs, identify, collect and destroy the POPs by means that do not, themselves, cause hazards, generate POPs or otherwise threaten or injure health and/or the environment.

 

5) Reasonable criteria as well as a workable and transparent procedure should be established for identifying new POPs beyond the original twelve as targets for the global programme of action. Once new POPs have met the established criteria according to the established procedure, then they too should be subject to elimination as described above.

6) POPs elimination should proceed through a transition regime that is rapid, orderly and just. Unnecessary delay should not be tolerated. Phase-out transitions should proceed through a planned and orderly regime that is designed to keep economic and social costs to a minimum and to avoid disruptions and dislocations. In some cases, there will be need for transition assistance and/or other aid to specific groups of workers or communities who currently depend for their livelihood on production or use of POPs, on technologies that generate POPs or on materials that routinely generate POPs during their ordinary life cycle. When there are economic benefits as well as economic costs associated with a POPs phase-out regime, these should be equitably distributed among affected groups.