IPEN Steering Committee Member Imogen Ingram from the Island Sustainability Alliance Cook Islands (ISACI) has co-authored an important paper about marine litter plastics and their toxic chemical components that has been published in Environmental Sciences Europe.
IPEN Participating Organizations, Arnika and EARTH, released a report on POPs in four different hot-spots in Thailand. It was found that that there are residues of organochlorine pesticides still present in the environment of Thailand. The most problematic POPs found in the hotspot areas are unintentionally produced chemicals such as dioxins, hexachlorobenzene, pentachlorobenzene, PCBs, hexachlorobutadiene, hexachlorocyclohexane.
The government has been urged to make a serious effort to combat persistent organic pollutants (POPS), toxic byproducts from industrial processes, from damaging the environment after a recent study found unsafe levels of POPs in eggs collected near factories in Samut Sakhon and Khon Kaen.
UN Expert Committee recommends global action on outdated DDT-Contaminated Pesticide
(Rome, Italy) A UN technical committee has determined that Dicofol, an outdated DDT-contaminated pesticide should be eliminated globally under the Stockholm Convention, an international treaty that bans the world’s most hazardous chemical pollutants.
The week-long meeting of the Stockholm Convention’s expert committee was held from 17-20th October 2017 and attended by many industry associations and companies involved in the production and use of fluorinated chemicals.
In Rome, the expert committee tackled a recommendation for adding PFOA to the treaty, including possible exemptions for continued uses. PFOA is known as the ‘Teflon chemical’ or C8 and has widely polluted drinking water throughout the world. The Committee began evaluation of the industry’s fluorinated substitute, PFHxS, which has been widely used as an alternative for PFOS.
