ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS International POPs treaty faces implementation hurdles
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fficials from 92 countries in July agreed to take action on 12 persistent organic pollutants (POPs) by 2000. But two issues loom large as the negotiations now begin to focus on more substantive matters—devising a way to add POPs to the action list and providing the technical and financial assistance to implement the final treaty. The environment officials who met in Montreal, Canada, this July under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) agreed to take action on 12 POPs long identified as the "dirty dozen" because of their toxicity, persistence, and their ability to bioaccumulate and to travel long distances. However, 10 of the 12 have already been banned by the United States and Canada, and the remaining two, dioxins and furans are well known chemicals said Clifton Curtis director of the Global Toxics Campaign for the World Wildlife Fund Difficult deliberations begin next month when scientists and policy makers from around the world with expertise in chemical assessment convene the Criteria Expert Group (CEG) and begin developing recommended procedures to expand the treaty's scope beyond the 12 chemicals listed at the first round of talks in July. Conflicts are likely to arise, observers S3.V because countries differ over the need to take action on other chemicals. This work is "crucial to the success of the vention. It will determine whether the convention succeeds or fails" a UNEP spokesman said The number of chemicals that could be described as POPs is very large. Over 300 pesticides and chemicals are listed as banned or severely restricted substances in one or more countries, according to UNEP figures.
Elevated concentrations of POPs have been found in humans and animals that live in Arctic regions as a result of long-range transport of these contaminants and their ability to bioaccumulate. (Courtesy Russel Shearer, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada)
Choosing which ones to act on has proved to be a thorny issue in previous regional negotiations to control POPs, such as the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, according to Henrik Selin, an environmental policy analyst at Linkopings Universitet in Linkoping, Sweden. At the July meeting, there was widespread and intense interest in the Criteria Expert Group, according to Bo Wahlstrom, with the UNEP secretariat in Geneva. The decision to provide simultaneous translation of the CEG meetings into six languages reflects the interest from a range of countries, said Wahlstrom. The CEG's task involves evaluating substances already known or seriously suspected to be hazardous. Participants will also discuss how to include socioeconomic considerations in the recommendations. The evaluation process is unlikely to involve any new laboratory testing or field studies; instead, the group will evaluate available information. The CEG has clear instructions to incorporate certain criteria into any assessment of potential
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POPs that could be added to the list. The process should incorporate criteria pertaining to persistence, bioaccumulation, toxicity and exposure in different regions. It should also take into account the potential for regional and global transport, including dispersion mechanisms for the atmosphere and hydrosphere, migratory species, and the need to reflect possible influences of marine transport and tropical climates. To get started, the committee will examine the range of values represented by these POPs as a guide for its work on criteria values, according to Charles Auer, in EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances who will be attending CEG meetings on behalf of the United States. Three meetings are scheduled to take place before each of the three main negotiating sessions. The talks leading to agreement on the first 12 POPs raised numerous practical issues related to the implementation of an international ban or phaseout of these chemicals. These include finding affordable and workable pesticide alternatives; determining PCB
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inventories and acceptable destruction techniques; and devising methods to limit dioxin and furan emissions. Many representatives of developing countries were concerned that focusing on future chemicals will move negotiations away from the pressing reality of dealing with the 12 already listed. Many developing country delegates emphasized the importance of provisions
for financial and technical assistance if they are to successfully implement any obligations placed on them by a future agreement African delegates also expressed concerns that health issues related to vector-borne diseases such as malaria be given more consideration. Indeed, developing countries feared the talks would ignore their need to find and fund costeffective alternatives to POPs, in
particular, DDT. These implementation issues were well known before the July meeting convened and are not likely to be negotiated until early in 1999, participants said. And since they relate to implementation, they are less crucial to the current negotiations than the CEG deliberations according to U.S. officials. —REBECCA RENNER
British study finds endocrine disruption widespread in native fish British researchers have, for the first time, documented widespread sexual disruption in native fish at levels of contamination commonly found in the U.K. environment, according to a paper published in the current issue of ES&T (Sept. 1,1998, p. 2498-2506)) The three-year study is "probably the most extensive study of wild populations worldwide," according to project director John Sumpter, an endocrinologist at Brunei University in Uxbridge, United Kingdom. It links effluent from sewage treatment plants in British rivers and the feminization of a native fish, the male roach. In a previous study the same research group identified natural and synthetic hormones secreted in women's urine as the most potent endocrine disrupters in sewage effluent, and hence the most likely cause of vitellogenin production in caged male fish exposed to sewage effluent {ES&T, June e, 1198, p. 1549). But the feminization observed in the current study could be due to a variety of agents, including industrial chemicals present in the water or the sediment according to Susan Jobling a Brunei toxicologist who is one of the project's principle investigators In the early 1990s the roach became one of the poster species for the unfolding controversy over endocrine disrupters when biologists noticed that some of the male fish from sewage-laden rivers had testes laden with eggs. Scientists suspected that something in the water was acting like a sex hormone, and they have been studying U.K. waters and U.K. fish ever since.
The current study found that in some rivers all of the male roach sampled downstream from treatment plants had testes containing precursors of eggs as well as sperm, a phenomena known as "intersex." These results have surprised and concerned the Environment Agency for England and Wales, one of the project's sponsors After preliminary results were released in 3. government report in January, the environment agency issued a strongly worded warning that U.K. industries should consider substitutes for hormonedisrupting chemicals
a strong relationship between the concentration of sewage effluent and the severity of intersex characteristics. The observed degree of feminization ranged from slight to extreme. In extreme cases the sperm duct was replaced by an ovarian cavity. But there is a lot of variation in severity at any one site. "The correlation between the concentration of effluent and the severity of intersex is a good first step" toward explaining the roach phenomenon said Gary Ankley an EPA toxicologist who studies endocrine disrupters But he noted that the researchers have not identified the compound or compounds responsible nor do they know the exposure '
On a broader level, the results suggest that hormonelike chemicals may be causing widespread harm to aquatic ecosystems, said Jobling. Previous studies throughout the world on the environmental effects of endocrine disrupters have concentrated on a few "hot spots" where exposure has been high. But, "we are looking at widespread effects that could be due to endocrine disrupters in a wild population," she said. However, some U.S. researchers caution against extrapolating these findings outside of the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, caged male fish exposed to effluent commonly produce vitellogenin, a protein involved in egg-laying that is normally only found in females. But in U.S. waters, such 3. response is r
