Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
toxicological toll inside and outside the Arctic, there is not a great deal of evidence
outside the EU to show that agencies responsible for evaluating the safety and reg-
ulating the use and disposal of new substances (including pharmaceuticals) are
taking into account the properties of POPs and of endocrine disruption.
·
Governments can work cooperatively to address a problem once it has occurred.
We now have the regional POPs and heavy metals protocols (under the CLRTAP)
and the global conventions on POPs and mercury (Stockholm and Minamata, re-
spectively). However, once again, initial progress was painfully slow and involved
more activity from the “denial” lobby groups. Oreskes and Conway have shown
that this opposition was still rumbling on - complete with posthumous attacks on
Rachel Carson - well into the first decade of the present century. The time period
that elapsed between alerting the CLRTAP to Arctic concerns on POPs and the
signing of the POPs protocol was eight years (1990-1998). The UNEP Governing
Council initiated the global process in 1995, but the resulting Stockholm Conven-
tion was not signed until 2001. The Barrow Declaration of the Arctic Council in
2000 asked UNEP to consider global controls on mercury, but the Minamata Con-
vention was only agreed to in January 2013 and had only one ratification by
September 2014.
1
PCBs were marketed as mixtures of many different types known as congeners. The most common mix-
ture was called
Aroclor
.
2
Specific examples include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), including penta- and octa-BDE,
hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) and polybrominated biphenyls.
3
PFAS include perfluorinated sulphonates (PFOS) and perfluorinated carboxylic acid (PFCA), of which
perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) is the best example.
4
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is an independently operating financial organization that
provides grants for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation,
the ozone layer and persistent organic pollutants. Since 1991, the GEF has provided $11.5 billion in
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