History

The World's Contribution - The Stockholm Convention

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) was adopted in 2001 in response to the urgent need for global action to protect human health and the environment from POPs.

The Convention seeks the elimination or restriction of production and use of all intentionally produced POPs (i.e. industrial chemicals and pesticides) and unintentionally produced POPs. The Stockholm Convention addresses the challenge posed by these toxic chemicals by starting with 12 of the worst POPs ever created.

• Nine of the POPs are pesticides: aldrin, chlordane, DDT (famous for harming wildlife populations like bald eagles, ospreys, and other predatory birds and for contaminating the milk of nursing mothers), dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene.
• Three industrial chemicals: hexachlorobenzene (HCB), mirex, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs have received a great deal of publicity for polluting rivers and lakes in industrial regions, killing or poisoning fish, and causing several human health effects through exposure to PCB (such as accidental spills or food contamination).
• Four families of unintentional chemical by-products: polychlorinated dioxins and furans, HCBs and PCBs. They cause a variety of health effects on humans and some types of dioxins, furans and dioxin-like PCBs are toxic cancer-causing chemicals.

To further understand the Stockholm Convention please refer to Ridding the World of POPs

Canada's contribution

In 1995, the federal government adopted the Toxic Substances Management Policy. The policy provides a science-based framework to identify toxic substances that are bioaccumulative , persistent and predominantly released as a result of human activity. The Policy calls for the virtual elimination of these substances from the environment.

All twelve substances identified in the Stockholm Convention are targeted for virtual elimination under Canada's Toxic Substances Management Policy. None of the POPs pesticide are produced or registered for use in Canada. PCBs have never been manufactured in Canada. Commercial, manufacturing and processing uses of PCBs were restricted in Canada in 1977, bringing to an end the manufacture and import of new PCB equipment and the refilling of existing equipment.

As a result of this and the management controls that followed in the 1980s, the overall level of PCBs in the Canadian environment has declined. Canada is working to minimize releases of unintentionally produced POPs, such as dioxins and furans, through initiatives such as Canada-wide Standards.

Canadian research in the 1970s and 1980s helped scientists to recognize and understand the POPs problem, and Canadian efforts helped to bring international attention to the issue. As a result of working with other countries, Canada succeeded in its goal of developing international control agreements such as the 1998 United National Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) POPs Protocol and the 2001 Stockholm Convention on POPs.