Persistent organic pollutants, or “POPs,” are chemicals that persist in the environment for years – sometimes decades. POPs build up in all living creatures, and become more concentrated as they move up the food chain. Most can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and are linked to a range of serious health effects, including birth defects, infertility, and cancer.
POPs can travel long distances in global air and water currents, settling eventually in the polar regions. As a result, Indigenous peoples in the Arctic carry astonishing levels of POPs in their blood and breastmilk, even when the chemicals have never been used in the region. Traditional foods such as meat from whales, walrus, and seals can be so contaminated that it qualifies as hazardous waste.
Throughout the 1990s, PAN worked with partner groups around the world to win the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs Treaty), which targets this entire class of chemicals for global elimination.
The POPs Treaty sets timetables for phaseout of target chemicals, provides assistance to help countries eliminate POPs, and works with scientists to expand the list of target chemicals. Nine of the initial 12 chemicals slated for international phaseout were pesticides, and several new pesticides have been added to the list.
See our International Treaties resource page for more information on PAN’s ongoing engagement in this process.
Resources:
Stockholm Convention listed POPs chemicals