First joint meeting of the Chemical Review Committee (CRC) of Rotterdam Convention and Stockholm Convention's Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee ((POPRC) will be held Sunday, 20 October 2013. This joint meeting was agreed to by the
bureaux of the Committees and the conferences of the Parties to the
Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, at their sixth meetings held from
28 April to 10 May 2013.
The purpose of the joint meeting is for
scientific information exchange between the members of the Committees.
The Committee will have before it proposals for listing
decabromodiphenyl ether (commercial mixture, c-decaBDE) and dicofol in
Annexes A, B and/or C to the Stockholm Convention. The Committee will
also review, among other things, the draft risk management evaluation on
chlorinated naphthalenes and hexachlorobutadiene and the draft risk
profile on pentachlorophenol and its salts and esters. The meeting will be held at FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy.
Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
are organic chemical substances, that is, they are carbon-based. They
possess a particular combination of physical and chemical properties
such that, once released into the environment, they:
- remain intact for exceptionally long periods of time (many years);
- become widely distributed throughout the environment as a result of natural processes involving soil, water and, most notably, air;
- accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms including humans, and are found at higher concentrations at higher levels in the food chain; and
- are toxic to both humans and wildlife.
As a result of releases to the environment over the past several
decades due especially to human activities, POPs are now widely
distributed over large regions (including those where POPs have never
been used) and, in some cases, they are found around the globe. This
extensive contamination of environmental media and living organisms
includes many foodstuffs and has resulted in the sustained exposure of
many species, including humans, for periods of time that span
generations, resulting in both acute and chronic toxic effects.
In addition, POPs concentrate in living organisms through another
process called bioaccumulation. Though not soluble in water, POPs are
readily absorbed in fatty tissue, where concentrations can become
magnified by up to 70,000 times the background levels. Fish, predatory
birds, mammals, and humans are high up the food chain and so absorb the
greatest concentrations. When they travel, the POPs travel with them. As
a result of these two processes, POPs can be found in people and
animals living in regions such as the Arctic, thousands of kilometers
from any major POPs source.
Specific effects of POPs can include cancer, allergies and
hypersensitivity, damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems,
reproductive disorders, and disruption of the immune system. Some POPs
are also considered to be endocrine disrupters, which, by altering the
hormonal system, can damage the reproductive and immune systems of
exposed individuals as well as their offspring; they can also have
developmental and carcinogenic effects.
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