The Stockholm Convention established a science-based process for new persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention. The Convention recognizes that a lack of full scientific certainty should not prevent a candidate substance from proceeding in the evaluation or listing and clearly mandates Parties to decide on listing “in a precautionary manner.” This new Guide highlights three new candidates for listing in the Convention in 2017 - decabromodiphenyl ether (DecaBDE), short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs), and hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD) - and provides the POPs Review Committee's recommendation for which annex the POPs should be listed under in the Convention, the chemicals' uses, alternatives, adverse effects, and more.
At the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions Conferences of the Parties (COP) in April 2017, key decisions will be made that define what is included as POPs waste. The definition will be based on a threshold concentration for a range of specific POPs (e.g. dioxin, PCBs, PFOS, etc.) and any waste containing more than that threshold concentration value will be defined as "POPs waste."’ Such POPs waste will be subject to measures as required under Article 6 of the Stockholm Convention to ensure that it is “Disposed of in such a way that the persistent organic pollutant content is destroyed or irreversibly transformed.”
Tadesse Amera, IPEN Steering Committee Member and Director of IPEN Participating Organization Pesticide Action Nexus Ethiopia, and Ted Smith, Coordinator of IPEN Participating Organization International Campaign for Responsible Technology, are featured in this story from Ensia: These companies are figuring out how to take the toxics out of electronics
The IPEN Quick Views document is a summary statement of some IPEN views about issues that will be taken up at the 4th International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4), including, among others, highly hazardous pesticides, chemicals in products, lead in paint, electronics, the overall orientation and guidance (OOG) document, endocrine disruptors, nanotechnology and finances. Read the Quick Views here.