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A Toxics-Free Future

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Highlights Front Roll

New Report: The Arctic’s Plastic Crisis

Plastics Treaty INC-4

New Report: Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: Threats to Human Health

6th United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-6)

Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception

See StopPoisonPlastic.org - our website on toxic plastics

Video: Plastics Poisoning Our Health

Stockholm Convention

U.N. Expert Committee Recommends Global Elimination of Two Toxic Plastic Additives

Friday, 30 September 2022

(Rome, Italy) A U.N. expert scientific review committee has evaluated two toxic, chemical additives found in many common plastics and has concluded the evidence of the substances harm to health and the environment qualify them for global elimination, recommending that the chemicals be listed under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

Indiana Citizens’ Group Exposes False Promises of Proposed Plastic Waste to Fuel Plant

Thursday, 29 September 2022

A new report compiled by Valerie Denney, a long-time communications adviser to IPEN, warns that a plastic waste-burning “bioenergy” facility proposed for the city of Gary, Indiana (about 30 miles south of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan) will cause major health and environmental problems.

Mercury

UN Human Rights Expert Calls for an End to the Trade in Mercury and its Use in Small-Scale Gold Mining

UN Special Rapporteur urges closing a loophole in Minamata Convention on Mercury to stop human rights abuses linked to mercury in gold mining

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Geneva, Switzerland - As many as 15 million men, women and children around the world suffer significant and potentially life-threatening human rights abuses from mercury used in small-scale gold mining, according to a groundbreaking report presented today by Marcos A. Orellana, the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights.

Plastic

Plastic Waste

IPEN Group Joins AMCEN Meeting in Senegal

Monday, 12 September 2022 - 2:09pm

A delegation of IPEN members are joining the resumed eighteenth session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) in Dakar, Senegal this week, under the theme: “Ensuring the well-being of populations and ensuring environmental sustainability in Africa".

Fourth Meeting of the Intersessional Process for SAICM

The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was signed in 2006 at the first session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM). SAICM is a unique global strategy to create a world where chemicals are no longer produced or used in ways that harm human health and the environment.

IPEN is actively engaged in the August 2022 in-person SAICM IP4 (4^th Intersessional Process) meeting in Bucharest, Romania. We have engaged with the SAICM process since the first Preparatory meeting in 2003 and continue to support the contributions of our member organizations around the world to the SAICM Process today.

Lead Paint

IPEN Urges Action to End the Use of Lead Paint

Thursday, 11 August 2022 - 3:33pm

In an article for Asia Pacific Coatings Journal (APCJ), the leading trade magazine for the coatings industry in Asia, IPEN Senior Adviser Jack Weinberg and Jeiel Guarino, IPEN Lead Paint Elimination Campaigner describe the need for and effects of stricter global rules to end the trade in lead chromates, the pigments used in lead paint.

Lead paints were banned in many wealthy countries decades ago, but they are still widely used in many countries. The WHO says that lead paint continues to be one of the largest sources of domestic exposure to lead in children, and doctors and scientists agree that there is no safe level of lead exposure.

Indigenous Peoples

Studies Highlight Risks to Arctic Indigenous People from Toxic Chemicals

Monday, 27 June 2022

A study published this month in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research co-authored by IPEN co-chair Pamela Miller with a group of scientists, colleagues from Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), and Indigenous community leaders found that highly toxic chemicals have accumulated in the bodies of seals, whales, and reindeer of the northern Bering Sea, contaminating vital food sources of Arctic Indigenous people.

The researchers coordinated with Indigenous hunters to collect tissue samples from traditionally harvested animals and found that toxic flame retardants (PBDEs) that were phased out in the U.S. in 2004 were frequently detected in all samples. The “forever chemicals” PFAS, substances linked to cancer, liver damage, decreased fertility, and other health conditions, were also found in some samples. The study concluded that “…PBDEs are present in tissues of traditional food animals… and consumption of these animals likely contributes to exposure among Arctic Indigenous Peoples.”