8:49 AM Jan 27, 1997

ECE MOVES TOWARDS BANNING SOME TOXICS

Geneva 24 Jan (TWN) -- Industrialized nations of Europe and North America have drawn up a list of toxic pesticides or chemicals, whose use is to be banned or severely restricted.

These products are linked to cancers, birth defects, male infertility and low-intelligence.

The pesticides to be banned include DDT, aldrin, chlordane and toxaphene. Some others such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) -- used widely in flame retardants and as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment -- will have their use severely restricted.

At a week-long meeting of the Working Group on Strategies at the UN's regional body, the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), experts identified and agreed to ban or restrict some 15 persistent organic pollutants (POPs). These will be annexed to a protocol to be concluded under ECE auspices.

An ECE official, Mr. Lars Nordberg, who is the deputy Director of Environment and Human Settlements Division of the ECE, said a "decisive stage" has been reached in drawing up of a protocol on POPs.

"It has not been easy to draw up an initial list of POPs for inclusion in a protocol, since so many interests are at stake," he said. While POPs may be harmful for humans, some are useful in agriculture and even for human health, making it essential to find scientific arguments for putting some of the POPs on the list.

POPs fall into three broad categories of industrial chemicals like PCBs, by-products or contaminants like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, and pesticides like DDT.

POPs break down very slowly. Many are soluble in fats, but not in water, and hence are assimilated by plants, fish and animals, but are not easily eliminated. They tend to be assimilated and accumulate through the food chain. Thus, though the level of PCBs or DDT deposited in a lake may be very low, they will be concentrated in fatty tissues of plankton living in the lake.

And fish feeding on these plankton will further concentrate the PCBs or DDT. The process will be repeated in fish-eating birds, mammals and humans.

Very high concentrations of these substances are associated with a number of carcinogenic and other health effects. There is also a growing body of information that more subtle health effects -- such as immune suppression, intellectual impairment and birth defects -- can occur at environmental concentrations that may be the result of long-range transboundary air deposits.

Several of these like DDT, aldrin and toxaphene are banned already in several industrial countries, but some are widely used in developing countries either because they are cheap or no cheap substitutes are available.

The ECE official acknowledged the problems in negotiating a regional agreement on a global problem. POPs, he noted, can travel long distances by wind or water and no regional pact can entirely deal with the issue.

The remarks of Nordberg suggested that the regional treaty would have trade provisions to ensure that the production banned in the ECE area did not 'migrate' elsewhere.

The ECE would be seeking the advice of the WTO on a regional treaty with trade provisions, Nordberg said.

A conference under the auspices of UNEP is set for next year for a global pact on dealing with such POPs.

But with large chemical industry interests at stake, the negotiations are expected to be difficult and arduous.

The initial list of POPs which the experts drew are to be incorporated in a protocol for an international treaty in the ECE region.

The ECE official in charge of the talks, Mr. Lars Nordberg, said Friday that he hoped the ECE treaty would be a model for a wider world accord that would ensure a worldwide ban on the most dangerous chemicals.

An ECE press release said that general agreement has been reached among negotiators on inclusion of 15 POPs in the draft protocol.

These are: aldrin - a soil insecticide for control of root worms and beetles on crops like maize and cotton, and to control termites); chlordane - a pesticide used on maize and citrus and on lawns and gardens); chlordecone (insecticide); DDT, dieldrin (pesticide used to treat soil and seeds and controlling vectors like mosquitoes and tsetse flies, and used as a sheep dip); endrin (pesticide for control of insects and rodents); heptachlor (insecticide used in buildings and on food crops); hexachlorobenzene (HCB, used as wood preservative and fungicide for treating seeds); mirex (used to control ants, and a fire-retardant additive); toxaphene (insecticide used to control insect pests on cotton, banana, pineapple and other crops, as also insect pests on livestock and kill unwanted fish species in lakes).

Among industrial chemicals to be included are: hexabromobiphenyl, used as a flame-retardant additive in synthetic fibres and moulded plastics, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Among byproducts and contaminants to be included in the protocol are Dioxins and furans, byproducts of the chlorine industry, particularly in the manufacture, disposal and combustion of chlorinated plastic PVC, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - group of chemicals released during incomplete burning of coal, oil and gas or other organic substances. It is found in products such as creosote and tar.

Dioxin hit newspaper headlines 20 years ago, following an exposition at a chemical plant in Sevaso, Italy, when a cloud of the herbicide 2,4,5,T contaminated the surrounding area. Dioxin forms as a byproduct in the manufacture of 2,4,5,T.

The inclusion of short-chain chlorinated paraffins (industrial chemicals used in metal-working fluids, flame retardants in rubbers and textiles, in leather processing, and in paints and coatings); and lindane (or Gamma-HCH, an insecticide used on fruit, vegetable and forest crops (including Christmas trees) and in ointments to treat lice and scabies, as well as pentachlorophenol (a biocide and wood preservative used for power-line poles, railway sleepers and fence posts) is to be further examined, the ECE press release said.