ICCA Calls for Modernisation of UN POPs Convention

The process for evaluating substances under the UN Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) needs to be modernised, says the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA).

Speaking for the organisation, Rob Simon told Chemical Watch that the Convention now considers industrial chemicals, such as PFOS and PFOA. These, he said, have very different use patterns and environmental fate characteristics than the initial 12 POPs.

"Many are in active commercial use, have multiple applications, are integrated in global supply chains, and are more difficult to substitute. It would not be appropriate to use the same assumptions, criteria, and environmental fate models to assess these substances," said Mr Simon, who is vice president of chemical products and technology at the American Chemistry Council.

Under the Convention, substances proposed must meet screening criteria set out in its Annex D. This considers information on a substance's persistence in the environment, bio-accumulation, potential for long-range environmental transport and adverse effects.

But, Mr Simon said, the science for assessing and identifying POPs and persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic (PBT) substances has evolved since the Convention's 2004 ratification. These advances, he said, should be "embraced to facilitate a more scientifically rigorous identification process".

For example, he said, the Persistent Organic Pollutants review committee (POPRC) has not consistently assessed whether the potential for an adverse outcome from a compound is of sufficient impact to warrant global action. The committee has generally relied almost exclusively on bioconcentration factor screening criteria (BCF) for assessing persistence and bioaccumulation, coupled with presence in remote regions, as the basis for a POP listing, he added.

"It is rare that evidence of adverse outcomes of sufficient impact to warrant global action is rigorously considered even though the convention explicitly encourages the assessment of this information when it is available."

In addition, Mr Simon said, the committee needs to give full consideration to country and industry input that informs the evaluation of candidate substances. It must also engage downstream users of the chemicals that are under review earlier in the process. This, he argued, would ensure that proposed risk management recommendations are fully considered.

Comprehensive process
However, Joe Digangi, senior scientist at the International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen), said the current evaluation process is modern, comprehensive and reflects the global consensus agreement of 181 government parties.

"The industry decided it did not like the evaluation process after governments started nominating currently used chemicals for global elimination because they met all convention criteria."

He added that governments have so far agreed to list all the chemicals evaluated by the expert committee because the process is rigorous and meets convention obligations.

"One of the Stockholm Convention's most important features is that it is a living treaty. That means it should ban living chemicals, not just dead ones."

Mr Digangi said the chemical industry should have never produced POPs and should take responsibility to assess their own substances for POP properties and proactively phase them out. He added that once one of their substances is listed, the chemical industry should internalise its costs by paying for global monitoring and cleanup.

At last month's eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention in Geneva, all three of the substances that had been nominated were listed – decaBDE and SCCPs in Annex A (elimination) and hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD) in Annex C (unintentional production).