POPs Hotspots

Selected POPs waste "Hot Spots" around the World

World map of POPs waste hot spots

Note This is not a definitive map of world POPs “Hot Spots”. Instead it presents a range of examples from every continent where POPs in solid wastes present risks to human health and the environment. There are many other sites which are not included here – either because of lack of space, absence of data or, in some cases, because the contamination has not yet been reported. If Governments are to “Keep the Promise” of the Stockholm Convention then these other sites also need to be investigated, reported and either remediated or, where pollution is ongoing, alternative processes which do not produce POPs waste should be used.

Selected POPs waste "Hot Spots" around the World

World map of POPs waste hot spots

POPs – persistent organic pollutants – are hazardous chemicals which have distinctive and very dangerous properties. POPs persist in the environment for a long time; they can travel long distances through the air or sea; and they are ‘bioaccumulative’. This means that they build up in living organisms, mainly in fatty tissue, and their concentration increases as they rise through each level of a food chain – and so the highest concentrations are normally found in the top predators like humans and polar-bears. POPs are highly toxic and levels found in some people and animals are above those known to cause health and biological effects. Many of these chemicals are ‘endocrine disruptors’ and act like hormones in our bodies; some of them are carcinogenic; the others are mutagenic and affect DNA or are teratogenic and can cause birth defects.

Some of the POPs are pesticides; other are industrial chemicals; and some occur as unintentional by-products of chemical and combustion processes. In all cases they stay in the environment for a very long time after the original sources of pollution are closed or stopped because the POPs degrade very slowly. Because of this, and the inevitability of their release into the environment when used in manufacturing or as products such as pesticides it is impossible to use or produce POPs without severe risks to human health and the environment. It is therefore essential to ban, or at the very least to severely restrict, their use and to eliminate historic residues and stockpiles. Safer alternatives are invariably available and dramatically reduce the risks to people and wildlife. There are also much safer alternatives to those processes and practices, such as chlorine bleaching of paper or waste incineration, which generate POPs as unintentional by-products.

The Stockholm Convention

The Stockholm Convention is a global legally binding treaty which came into force on 17th May 2004 and, as of 1st January 2009, has 162 Parties. The Convention aims to eliminate 12 of the most significant POPs including nine pesticides; two industrial chemicals and polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans (or, more commonly ‘dioxins’).

The convention is unique in it’s scope because it addresses all the routes by which hazardous POPs might enter the environment, contaminate food chains and thus threaten human health. Previous conventions relevant to POPs dealt with only atmospheric emissions (the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution) or with waste and waste shipments (the Basel Convention).

This map is focused on route of environmental contamination by POPs through waste. This way becomes more and more important, but also with very little monitoring and poor regulations in comparison with air pollution for example.

POPs in the Environment

POPs escape into the environment in many ways. Some POPs were produced specifically for direct use in products, industrial equipment or as pesticides while other occur as by-products of industrial activities or as metabolites from the break-down of other chemicals released to the environment. Pathways into the environment can be direct or arise from spillage, discharges, venting, evaporation, waste products and so on.

Whilst the majority of environmental releases for many POPs are via waste disposal much less attention has generally been paid to this than to emissions to atmosphere or water. Many of the National Implementation Plans that are required to be prepared by parties to the Stockholm Convention reviewing releases in countries have concentrated almost exclusively on emissions to air, for example. This approach is difficult to understand when it is considered that of the total emissions of approximately 20 kg I-TEQ/y dioxins in the E.U. only 20% was emitted to air and around 80% discharged in the form of solid process residues and wastes.

Article 6 of the Stockholm Convention outlines the measures required to reduce or eliminate releases from stockpiles and wastes. This includes the need to define a “low” POPs content. This is necessary to distinguish between those POPs which must be “destroyed or irreversible transformed so that they do not exhibit the characteristics of persistent organic pollutants ” and wastes which may be “otherwise disposed of in an environmentally sound manner”.

Table 1: International Standards for dioxin levels

This is a crucial distinction because even disposal in an “environmentally sound manner” can leave a damaging legacy of POPs with high levels of releases into the environment – particularly in those countries which lack an effective regulatory control system and which have limited analytical capacity to monitor and test waste treatments. The provisionally defined “low” POPs level is set in the Basel POPs Waste Guidelines but, unfortunately, at levels that are inappropriately high:

Table 2

These limits are not protective of human health or the environment. If they are not significantly reduced then they threaten to fundamentally undermine the ultimate goal of the Stockholm Convention which is “to eliminate POPs”.

The level established for dioxins (PCDD/Fs), for example, at 15 µg I-TEQ/ kg can be seen to be too high when we consider a recent incident in the UK where waste incineration bottom and fly ash was spread on the allotments (communal gardens for producing food) and poultry was contaminated by high levels of dioxins. The ashes spread on the allotments contained levels of dioxins in the range upto 4.2 µg I-TEQ/kg – less than a third of the current provisional “low” POPs level yet this resulted in eggs contaminated with up to 56 pg WHO-TEQ/g on lipid basis. Those eggs exceeded the 3 pg WHOTEQ/ g EU limit set for dioxin content in eggs by nearly 20 times! Indeed the EU limit was exceeded by almost all eggs sampled from the allotments measured after this incident .

If we continue to use these very high provisional “low POPs content” levels approved by both the Basel Convention and the Stockholm Convention we can certainly expect problems in many countries. The Abidjan scandal should provide a timely warning that the Basel Convention has not managed to effectively control international waste shipments and that we are a long way from eliminating the terrible damage that can be caused by the global trade in waste. With the current thresholds large quantities of POPs in waste could lawfully, and in compliance with both Conventions, be exported to developing countries under the label of, for example, “construction material” – as they were in Newcastle, England. Waste below “low POPs content” is not considered to be hazardous waste unless it has other hazardous properties in addition to any POPs.

If the definition of low POPs content levels stands, it will also become difficult for Parties to raise the money and to obtain the resources necessary to properly detoxify POPs wastes. In the large number of countries where open and largely unregulated dumping of waste is still prevalent then it is inevitable that damage will be caused to health and the environment if POPs are not eliminated.

POPs in waste lead to POPs in food

The different pathways leading to POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) content in waste can include:
– obsolete pesticides that include POPs like DDT, hexachlorobenzene, lindane and others which have became waste
– transformers, capacitors and other equipment with oils including polychlorinated biphenyls and/or terphenyls
– waste from destroyed buildings that were contaminated by POPs (chemical plant in which POPs were produced or which could originate as unintentionally produced chemicals, pesticides storage, storage for waste which contained POPs etc.)
– residues from processes where POPs such as dioxins (PCDD/Fs), PCBs and/ or HCB are unintentionally produced (typical categories include waste incineration residues, sewage sludge from chlorine chemical plants etc.)
– contaminated soils and sediments and many, many others.

A few examples of POPs levels in different wastes and/or contaminated soils and their comparison with levels of food contamination related to these levels are listed in Table 3. This is further clear evidence that much lower levels of POPs in soils/wastes than those set as the provisional “low” POPs content limits has led to the serious contamination of food.

Risk reduction: How to Eliminate POPs in waste?

The question of how to eliminate POPs in wastes follows naturally after listing the problems above. The best way, of course, is prevention. This can be achieved by banning the production and use of intentionally produced POPs and by choosing technologies which do not create POPs such as dioxins or PCBs unintentionally. A good example is the problem of the treatment and disposal of medical waste in many developing countries. Incineration can be avoided by the use of good segregation practices in hospitals and treatment centres followed by non-combustion technologies such as autoclaves for any remaining waste. Alternative approaches can also be used for other kinds of waste to avoid incineration and co-incineration.

Table 3

There are many different ways of treating POPs in existing waste. The expert group working on the BAT/BEP Guidelines reviewed the efficiency of non-combustion technologies in terms of destruction of waste containing POPs. Several of technologies considered promise effective destruction of POPs waste whilst at the same time preventing creation of new POPs as required by the Stockholm Convention.

Incineration of such waste, by contrast, whether in incinerators or in cement kilns results in the production of new POPs including dioxins. These new POPs then accumulate in wastes produced by these technologies (see the chart on picture 1) and are subsequently likely to be released into the environment.

Pic. 1: Distribution of Dioxin Contamination in Wastes

Abbreviations used in the text and the tables:
DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (pesticide, POP)
DDD/DDE Metabolites of DDT
DL PCBs Dioxin-like PCBs
HCB Hexachlorobenzene (technical substance, pesticide, POP)
HCH Hexachlorocyclohexane (pesticide) gamma-HCH
– gamma isomer of hexachlorocyclohexane, usually called lindane (pesticide)
I-TEQ International toxic equivalent
OCPs Organochlorine pesticides
PBDEs Polybrominated diphenylethers (brominated flame retardants)
PCBs Polychlorinated biphenyls (technical substance, contaminant,POP)
PCDD/Fs Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans, shortly called “Dioxin” (unintentionally produced POP)
WHO-TEQ World Health Organisation toxic equivalent (WHO 1998)

Units:
mg milligram 10-³g
µg microgram 10-⁶g
ng nanogram 10-⁹g
pg picogram 10-¹²g
fg femtogram 10-^15g
ppm mg/kg
ppb µg/kg
ppt ng/kg

Contacts:

IPEN´s International Co-ordinator
Björn Beeler
address: 1962 University Ave # 4, Berkeley CA, 947 94 USA
e-mail: bbeeler@ciel.org
tel.: + 1 – (510) 704-1962
http://www.ipen.org

IPEN Dioxin, PCBs and Waste Working Group
c/o Arnika Association
address: Chlumova 17 130 00 Prague 3, Czech Republic
e-mail: toxic@arnika.org
tel./fax.: + 420 222 781 471
http://english.arnika.org

Contributors:

Alan Watson, C.Eng
IPEN DWG Senior Advisor
Public Interest Consultans, UK

IPEN gratefully acknowledges the participation of public interest NGOs and experts for providing actual information about hot spots.

Published by Arnika Association on behalf of IPEN Dioxin, PCBs and Waste Working Group in cooperation with Kartografie Praha, a.s. in April 2009.
Design: Jakub Nemecek

POPs Waste Hotspot Report - .pdf 1,200KB