Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to make a presentation to a subsidiary body in August 1990 in Geneva. Hans Martin, who
wasascience manager withtheCanadian Atmospheric Environment Service, wasamentor
for me at that time and I often turned to him for advice. He had a long history of working
on the acid rain CLRTAP protocols. The presentation went quite well and it was decided to
forward the proposal to the Executive Body (the convention's decision-making body).
The August 1990 meeting and most of the subsequent ones under the CLRTAP took
place in the old League of Nations buildings in magnificent grounds just above Lake
Geneva. Iquickly foundallies there, mainly from the Nordic countries, Germany,the Neth-
erlands and the United Kingdom. Most importantly, I met Lars Lindau from Sweden, who
was a veteran at the CLRTAP, and Lars Nordberg, who headed the secretariat for the con-
vention. Lars Lindau already had a mandate to conduct an evaluation of POPs for a differ-
ent organisation under the UNECE, but it was not directly linked to a convention that could
introduce chemical controls. Organochlorines are a class of POPs. As history later showed,
the Swedes were wise to use this term and Canada swiftly embraced it. The change made
no difference to our earlier evaluation of what was happening in the Arctic, and if you go
back a few pages, you can always switch the word
organochlorines
for the acronym
POPs
.
However, you cannot do it the other way around, as some POPs are not organochlorines.
The only technical difference resulting from adopting POPs was that we could now deal
with substances on the basis of their environmental behaviour rather than on their chemical
structure. Later on, we will see why this was such a good idea. Lars Lindau and I quickly
decided to combine our efforts. At our first meeting in Stockholm, he introduced me to
Sören Jensen (who we met earlier discovering that PCBs were everywhere in the environ-
ment) and Bo Jansson, who over the years has continued to teach me about the behaviour
ofPOPs.InDecember ofthe same year,the Executive Bodyagreed toestablish atask force
on POPs that Lars Lindau and I would co-chair. We were charged with developing the sci-
entific case fora legally binding POPsprotocol under the CLRTAP.Atask force co-chaired
by Czechoslovakia and Germany was given a similar mandate for heavy metals. We de-
cided to produce two reports for POPs: an “Overview of Persistent Organic Pollutants in
the Environment” and a “State of Knowledge Report on POPs”. The latter included a sum-
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