By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 1995 (IPS)

The monk seals of the Black Sea in Turkey, the Beluga whales of the Arctic, the coral reefs off Phuket island in Thailand and the coastal mangroves of Ecuador are dying slowly because of a common threat: human activities on land.

These range from industrial waste discharges into the Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea, and pesticides which make their way via ocean and wind currents to the Arctic Sea, to garbage generated by tourists in Thailand and the destruction of mangroves by shrimp farmers in Ecuador.

The United Nations has brought environment ministers here from around the world to do something about such threats, which experts say are responsible for almost 80 percent of all marine pollution.

Friday, representatives of more than 100 countries are expected to sign a “global plan of action” to tackle “persistent organic pollutants” (called POPs for short).

POPs will be the major focus of the work here, but other land- based activities, including the impact of tourism and water and sanitations systems, are also being discussed this week. Delegates have agreed that the latter issues should, in the first instance, be addressed at the local or regional level.

The document’s signing will be the final outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference on Protection of Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities — one of the many programmes launched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil.

The global plan will complement the U.N. Law of the Sea which governs marine activities. Unlike the Law of the Sea, however, the plan is not legally binding. Instead, it lays the groundwork for a convention to eliminate the worst of these chemicals and create a mechanism to identify other toxics.

At the top of the list of POPs to be addressed are the so- called “dirty dozen” — aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, dioxins, endrin, furans, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, PCBs and toxaphene.

These chemicals are highly toxic and persistent — which means that they do not break down for decades. They also “bio- accumulate” — when consumed, they are not excreted but accumulate in fatty tissue instead. Thus, animals high up in the food chain, which eat large quantities of other animals, retain higher doses of the chemicals.

Excerpt:

By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 1995 (IPS)

The monk seals of the Black Sea in Turkey, the Beluga whales of the Arctic, the coral reefs off Phuket island in Thailand and the coastal mangroves of Ecuador are dying slowly because of a common threat: human activities on land.

These range from industrial waste discharges into the Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea, and pesticides which make their way via ocean and wind currents to the Arctic Sea to garbage generated by tourists in Thailand and the destruction of mangroves by shrimp farmers in Ecuador.

The United Nations has brought environment ministers here from around the world to do something about such threats, which experts say are responsible for almost 80 percent of all marine pollution.

On Friday, representatives of more than 100 countries are expected to sign a “global plan of action” to tackle “persistent organic pollutants” (called POPs for short).

POPs will be the major focus of the work here, but other land- based activities, including the impact of tourism and water and sanitations systems, are also being discussed this week. Delegates have agreed that the latter issues should, in the first instance, be addressed at the local or regional level.

The document’s signing will be the final outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference on Protection of Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities — one of the many programmes launched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil.

The global plan will complement the U.N. Law of the Sea which governs marine activities. Unlike the Law of the Sea, however, the plan is not legally binding. Instead, it lays the groundwork for a convention to eliminate the worst of these chemicals and create a mechanism to identify other toxics.

At the top of the list of POPs to be addressed are the so- called “dirty dozen” — aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, dioxins, endrin, furans, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, PCBs and toxaphene.

These chemicals are highly toxic and persistent — which means that they do not break down for decades. They also “bio- accumulate” — when consumed, they are not excreted but accumulate in fatty tissue instead. Thus, animals high up in the food chain, which eat large quantities of other animals, retain higher doses of the chemicals.

Regulatory experts classify these chemicals by their source. Some chemicals, like industrial mercury waste, come from “point” — or single — sources. Others, those that can be transported by wind and water, are said to come from “non-point sources.”

Industrial wastes make up some of the worst “point” sources, such as the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of chemicals, like mercury and phosphates, carried down the Danube every year into the Black Sea. Among other impacts, their pollution has resulted in a drastic reduction in the Sea’s monk seal population.

Action can be taken relatively easily, as it was in the Rhine, to reduce or regulate the toxics that spill into the river from industrial sites. But acting against non-point sources, like fertiliser, is much more difficult.

Take toxaphene, a cocktail of some 250 chemicals, which is sold as a pesticide. Banned for 20 years in North America due its cancer-producing properties, high levels of toxaphene have been discovered in trout fish caught in Lake Laberge in the Yukon Territory of Canada.

Studies by David Schindler, a scientist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, indicate that the pesticide was carried to Lake Laberge from Central America or Russia by wind currents.

Shirley Adamson, chairperson of the Ta-An KIwach-An tribe lives around Lake Laberge, told IPS in a telephone interview that toxaphene might also be present in the caribou and the wild fowl that feed on the fish. Meat from all these sources form an important part of the diet of the local people.

Others are also worried. “We have no idea what impact chemicals have had on the fish in the coastal waters of my country simply because we have never tested for them,” says Magnus Ngoile, a Tanzanian scientist who coordinates coastal and marine activities for the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is attending the meeting here.

It is not simply the wind and the waters that carry these chemicals, but also human activities, such as trade. The San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network (PAN) calls some of these toxic transfers the “circle of poison.”

For example, chemicals like DDT, a pesticide banned here for a generation, are still produced for export to other countries where they are applied on fruits and vegetables that are then shipped back here for consumption.

Chlordane and heptachlor, used to control underground termites, are two other chemicals whose use — but not production — is banned here. Just last year, Velsicol Chemical Company in Memphis, Tennessee, exported almost a million kilogrammes of the two pesticides.

The manufacture of some chemicals, like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), used as a coolant and a lubricant, has stopped since safer substitutes were found for their uses. Unfortunately, however, old stocks continue to be sold.

Some chemicals do not have ready substitutes, according to conference delegates.

“In our countries we need chemicals like DDT to fight malaria. If you want a global ban, then you must come up with alternatives,” says Salif Diop, a Senegalese delegate.

Robert Dekker, one of the Dutch negotiators, says DDT will be one of the hardest chemicals to ban, as will dieldrin, which is used to prevent the spread of locusts in Africa.

Another challenge lies with those chemical byproducts of other manufacturing processes. These include dioxins and furans which are created during incineration or through the production of chlorine.

Dioxin became famous in the 1960s as the principal toxin in Agent Orange, a herbicide used by U.S. forces to defoliate the terrain in Vietnam. It is described as many times more dangerous than cyanide and is believed to cause cancer, birth defects and a breakdown of immune systems.

But chlorine is used in hundreds of industrial processes worldwide — from the bleaching of paper to the production of polyvinylchloride plastics.

“We prefer not to think of banning all chlorine production until we have all the scientific facts,” says Magnus Johanneson, the head of the Icelandic environment ministry, which is coordinating the proposal for a POPs ban.

Excerpt:

By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 1995 (IPS)

The monk seals of the Black Sea in Turkey, the Beluga whales of the Arctic, the coral reefs off Phuket island in Thailand and the coastal mangroves of Ecuador are dying slowly because of a common threat: human activities on land.

These range from industrial waste discharges into the Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea, and pesticides which make their way via ocean and wind currents to the Arctic Sea to garbage generated by tourists in Thailand and the destruction of mangroves by shrimp farmers in Ecuador.

The United Nations has brought environment ministers here from around the world to do something about such threats, which experts say are responsible for almost 80 percent of all marine pollution.

On Friday, representatives of more than 100 countries are expected to sign a “global plan of action” to tackle “persistent organic pollutants” (called POPs for short).

POPs will be the major focus of the work here, but other land- based activities, including the impact of tourism and water and sanitations systems, are also being discussed this week. Delegates have agreed that the latter issues should, in the first instance, be addressed at the local or regional level.

The document’s signing will be the final outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference on Protection of Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities — one of the many programmes launched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil.

The global plan will complement the U.N. Law of the Sea which governs marine activities. Unlike the Law of the Sea, however, the plan is not legally binding. Instead, it lays the groundwork for a convention to eliminate the worst of these chemicals and create a mechanism to identify other toxics.

At the top of the list of POPs to be addressed are the so- called “dirty dozen” — aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, dioxins, endrin, furans, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, PCBs and toxaphene.

These chemicals are highly toxic and persistent — which means that they do not break down for decades. They also “bio- accumulate” — when consumed, they are not excreted but accumulate in fatty tissue instead. Thus, animals high up in the food chain, which eat large quantities of other animals, retain higher doses of the chemicals.

Regulatory experts classify these chemicals by their source. Some chemicals, like industrial mercury waste, come from “point” — or single — sources. Others, those that can be transported by wind and water, are said to come from “non-point sources.”

Industrial wastes make up some of the worst “point” sources, such as the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of chemicals, like mercury and phosphates, carried down the Danube every year into the Black Sea. Among other impacts, their pollution has resulted in a drastic reduction in the Sea’s monk seal population.

Action can be taken relatively easily, as it was in the Rhine, to reduce or regulate the toxics that spill into the river from industrial sites. But acting against non-point sources, like fertiliser, is much more difficult.

Take toxaphene, a cocktail of some 250 chemicals, which is sold as a pesticide. Banned for 20 years in North America due its cancer-producing properties, high levels of toxaphene have been discovered in trout fish caught in Lake Laberge in the Yukon Territory of Canada.

Studies by David Schindler, a scientist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, indicate that the pesticide was carried to Lake Laberge from Central America or Russia by wind currents.

Shirley Adamson, chairperson of the Ta-An KIwach-An tribe lives around Lake Laberge, told IPS in a telephone interview that toxaphene might also be present in the caribou and the wild fowl that feed on the fish. Meat from all these sources form an important part of the diet of the local people.

Others are also worried. “We have no idea what impact chemicals have had on the fish in the coastal waters of my country simply because we have never tested for them,” says Magnus Ngoile, a Tanzanian scientist who coordinates coastal and marine activities for the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is attending the meeting here.

It is not simply the wind and the waters that carry these chemicals, but also human activities, such as trade. The San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network (PAN) calls some of these toxic transfers the “circle of poison.”

For example, chemicals like DDT, a pesticide banned here for a generation, are still produced for export to other countries where they are applied on fruits and vegetables that are then shipped back here for consumption.

Chlordane and heptachlor, used to control underground termites, are two other chemicals whose use — but not production — is banned here. Just last year, Velsicol Chemical Company in Memphis, Tennessee, exported almost a million kilogrammes of the two pesticides.

The manufacture of some chemicals, like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), used as a coolant and a lubricant, has stopped since safer substitutes were found for their uses. Unfortunately, however, old stocks continue to be sold.

Some chemicals do not have ready substitutes, according to conference delegates.

“In our countries we need chemicals like DDT to fight malaria. If you want a global ban, then you must come up with alternatives,” says Salif Diop, a Senegalese delegate.

Robert Dekker, one of the Dutch negotiators, says DDT will be one of the hardest chemicals to ban, as will dieldrin, which is used to prevent the spread of locusts in Africa.

Another challenge lies with those chemical byproducts of other manufacturing processes. These include dioxins and furans which are created during incineration or through the production of chlorine.

Dioxin became famous in the 1960s as the principal toxin in Agent Orange, a herbicide used by U.S. forces to defoliate the terrain in Vietnam. It is described as many times more dangerous than cyanide and is believed to cause cancer, birth defects and a breakdown of immune systems.

But chlorine is used in hundreds of industrial processes worldwide — from the bleaching of paper to the production of polyvinylchloride plastics.

“We prefer not to think of banning all chlorine production until we have all the scientific facts,” says Magnus Johanneson, the head of the Icelandic environment ministry, which is coordinating the proposal for a POPs ban.

Excerpt: