At the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions Conferences of the Parties (COP) in April 2017, key decisions will be made that define what is included as POPs waste. The definition will be based on a threshold concentration for a range of specific POPs (e.g. dioxin, PCBs, PFOS, etc.) and any waste containing more than that threshold concentration value will be defined as "POPs waste."’ Such POPs waste will be subject to measures as required under Article 6 of the Stockholm Convention to ensure that it is “Disposed of in such a way that the persistent organic pollutant content is destroyed or irreversibly transformed.”
This video is an introduction to the United Nations Environment Programme's Dioxin Toolkit (2013). It offers a brief history of the Toolkit, including its relationship to the Stockholm Convention, and a step-by-step search of the Toolkit for information on identifying sources of dioxins and other unintentional POPs addressed by the Convention.
An independent food safety researcher has called on authorities in the Chinese mainland to impose tough limits on dioxin contamination of water and soil, following the detection of the carcinogen in Jiangsu hairy crabs sold in Hong Kong. Cancer-linked chemicals found in Hong Kong hairy crab
Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety said on Tuesday it found excessive dioxin levels in two of five hairy crab samples from two mainland farms it tested. One sample had 11.7 picograms of the contaminant per gram and the other 40.3 picograms, well above the safe level of 6.5 picograms.
(Beijing, China) High levels of dioxins and similar dangerous pollutants were found in free range chicken eggs samples taken close to waste incinerators and other industrial hot spots in six localities in China, according to a new study released today. Chicken eggs are an important part of the Chinese diet, and the study warned that contamination found in the egg samples represents a serious threat to the public health of populations living in these locations.
Eggs have been found to be sensitive indicators of persistent organic pollutant (POP) contamination in soils or dust and are an important exposure pathway from soil pollution to humans, and eggs from contaminated areas can readily lead to exposures with exceeding thresholds for the protection of human health (Van Eijkeren, Zeilmaker et al. 2006, Hoogenboom, ten Dam et al. 2014, Piskorska-Pliszczynska, Mikolajczyk et al. 2014).