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What are POPs?
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![[The Dirty Dozen]](../images/dirty12.gif)
Lars Nordberg: POPs are persistent organic pollutants. They
include various chemicals. Most of them are really nasty and
we usually speak about three different groups: industrial chemical
products like PCBs, combustion and by-products like dioxins, and
pesticides like DDT. But of course there are hundreds of compounds
in these groups and what we are focusing on right now is the "Dirty
Dozen" - 12 really nasty POPs. They are so nasty that many,
like DDT, have already been banned in some countries.
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What problems do they cause?
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One of the problems is that they are lipophilic, which means that
they accumulate in the fatty tissue of living animals and human
beings. They also magnify, which means that their concentration
increases in animals at the top of the food chain. When they
enter the body they don't leave it, they are stored in fat. They
are also persistent, which means that they do not disappear.
Once they have been created, once they enter the system, they
remain there for a long time. They are also semi-volatile, which
means that they can stay on the ground for a number of years and
then be transported hundreds of miles away and be deposited in
another place until they eventually end up in animals and humans.
It is furthermore very difficult to trace them. A pesticide
used in Asia can easily move to Europe.
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Is this a new problem?
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The problem has been well known for many years and that's why
DDT was banned a long time ago in many countries. But pesticides
are used to boost crop yields and, hence, food production. So
doing without them is also a problem. Many of the developing
countries rely on pesticides and fertilizers to reach their production
targets and without such chemicals or substitutes many people
would face starvation or further economic hardship. That is why
global action is needed. Financing is needed to find replacement
pesticides for example.
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Are there replacements?
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For pesticides, for example, there are replacements - at a price.
The reason that many developing countries continue to use toxaphene
is that it is cheap to produce and to use.
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What are the effects of these POPs?
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Most of the effects have been reported in the northern latitudes
in animals and human beings who eat these animals, in particular
those people who eat fatty sea foods like fish and seals. There
is thus a tendency for the arctic population to be hit much more
than others. The potential effects on health are impressive:
cancers, damage to the reproductive system, developmental effects,
disrupted endocrine and immune systems, neuro-behavioural impact.
As you can see, these POP's potentially contribute to many of
the modern-day diseases.
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How many people are hit by these POPs?
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Everyone has persistent organic pollutants in his or her body.
People who eat fat are even worse off. In the United States,
for example, a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences
estimates that pesticide abuse accounts for some 20,000 cases
of cancer a year. And pesticides are only one among many POPs.
Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of the oestrogen effect
of POPs. Many scientists believe that toxic agents in the environment
have reduced the average sperm count in men by 42% in the past
50 years. It has even been claimed that in certain communities
boys have been born without or with distorted sexual organs and
with limited or no reproductive capacity.
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What is the trend?
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Countries which no longer use these chemicals see that levels
of, for instance, DDT in their environment are no longer decreasing,
although this substance was banned many years ago. There are
two reasons for this. First, the wind blows such POPs over from
other areas where they are still in use. Second, they have been
accumulating in sediments and they are only now starting to move
out into water and into fish. I believe that the production of
such dangerous substances, which are man-made and destroy mankind,
should be stopped.
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Is it possible to cleanse the earth of these substances?
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No, unfortunately, we are stuck with them.
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What are you doing about these substances?
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The Executive Body for the ECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary
Air Pollution has decided to start negotiations on a protocol
dealing with POPs in 1996. Its aim would be to ban or at least
restrict the use of certain POPs. It has not yet been decided
which ones, but it is likely that the protocol will focus on the
"dirty dozen" - actually, there are 14. That is an
easier way to reach an agreement promptly; immediately dealing
with all possible POPs would take too long.
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What kind of time-frame are we talking about?
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The agreement could be ready by the end of 1997.
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What will be the end result?
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The end result would be a POP protocol for the ECE region, but
that is not really the "end" but only the beginning
of what could become a much longer process. An agreement will
reduce the future emission of such POPs, but it will not solve
the problem of existing ones and those which are created daily
in countries outside the region. There are attempts to act at
the global level. But that will take a lot of time and resources.
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