The IPEN Francophone Africa Hub, Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement (CREPD) organized its second regional meeting from the 30thto 31stMay 2019 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. The last Francophone Africa Regional meeting took place in Yaoundé, Cameroon in December 2016. This meeting was an opportunity to share experiences and build the capacities of Participating Organizations (POs). The meeting was attended by POs from the Francophone Africa region, the Regional Coordinators of the Anglophone Africa and North Africa & Middle East hubs, and an IPEN Co-Chair.
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Following a threat from Malacañang that Manila would cut diplomatic ties with Ottawa, Canada made good on its promise to repatriate tons of Canadian waste illegally exported to the Philippines about six years ago when a ship that would haul them back arrived on Thursday at Subic Bay Freeport to load the cargo.
Note: this article has been translated to English using Google Translate and thereafter edited for English discrepancies.
In Chelyabinsk, a round table discussion will take place considering issues of interaction between the public, regulatory bodies and industrial enterprises to ensure the purity of the atmospheric air.
New research from a network of anti-toxin NGOs and research centers in Europe, Africa, and Australia has indicated that people living or working around waste combustion sites, in cities in Ghana and Cameroon, are massively exposed to brominated dioxins, chlorinated dioxins, and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
In particular, Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Eggs: Report from Africastates, “An adult eating just one egg from a free-range chicken foraging in Agbogbloshie area would exceed the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) tolerable daily intake (TDI) for chlorinated dioxins by 220-fold.”
In February 2019, under growing public and political pressure, the US EPA finally announced plans to address PFOS and PFOA, two toxic chemicals widespread in drinking water that are still unregulated in the US after decades of use. Instead of praise, the EPA announcement triggered anger after the public realized that the agency will conduct years of assessment before actually regulating them. US residents may be more incensed if they know that the rest of the world has already acted globally on these substances.
This brief overview of work by Arnika and IPEN calls into question whether the "Dirty Dozen" chemicals listed in the Stockholm Convention are adequately addressed, and whether sufficient safeguards against the toxic impacts of these POPs exist for human health and the environment. The report includes a list of test results over an 18 year period.