Global restrictions on bioaccumulative chemicals classed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) will apply.
Global restrictions on bioaccumulative chemicals classed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) will apply from 17 May 2004, under the terms of the 2001 Stockholm Convention.
Negotiated as part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the convention will now enter into force, thanks to France providing the crucial 50th ratification.
The Convention requires parties to ban several pesticides including chlordane and the chemical hexachlorobenzene. The treaty also requires eventual elimination of DDT, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzo- p-dioxins, and dibenzofurans.
In Geneva, UNEP chief Klaus T?pfer welcomed moves to end production and use of ’highly toxic chemicals [which] have killed and injured people and wildlife by inducing cancer and damaging the nervous, reproductive, and immune systems’.
In the EU, where POPs are already banned or tightly controlled, a new EU regulation will come into force at about the same time as the Convention.
Members of the European Parliament stress that EU legislation will be more stringent than the convention. In particular they welcome prospects of an EU ban by 2008 on hexachlorocyclohexane products, including the pesticide lindane - a substance long targeted by environmental campaigners.