How Persistent Organic Pollutants Are the Baddest of the Bad Actor Chemicals

[Guest guest]

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2003/reform-school/environmental-issue-21.htm

 

POPs GO THE WEASELS WHO KEEP MAKING

THIS STUFF

.... or How Persistent Organic Pollutants Are the Baddest of the " Bad Actor "

Chemicals.

 

We're just back from the baddest grammar lesson ever and we're chomping at the

bite mark for the Bad Usage and Diction Seminar. In the meantime, let's explore

an Apocalypse Now related to a Spraying Operation Then.

 

A 2003 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found

that even 30-40 years after the defoliant Agent Orange was used during the

Vietnam War, people are still suffering from the consequences of its use. Jeez,

doesn't this kind of stuff just break down after a while and become inert? Nope,

not if it's a persistent organic pollutant, or POP.

 

In this case, the POP is a dioxin contaminant in the Agent Orange known as TCDD.

In the parts of Vietnam that were heavily spray during the war, the dioxin has

remained so prevalent in the environment and food chain that it continues to

get into residents of those areas today, even into children who weren't alive

back then and were never sprayed with Agent Orange.

 

Common health effects are skin problems and liver damage, but the witch's brew

of herbicide/TCDD is also a probable carcinogen, and long-term exposure may

cause developmental and reproductive problems. According to the US Environmental

Protection Agency, there is currently no known safe level of dioxin exposure.

 

The good news is that only the regions of Vietnam that were heavily sprayed with

Agent Orange continue to suffer the high levels of contamination. But there is a

broader lesson here: POPs are bad news and are something we should eliminate

from use—everywhere.

 

Here's another POPs quiz item for you: In a 2003 study of endocrine disrupting

chemicals (EDC) found in the air and dust in 120 US homes, over 60 of the EDCs

were found. Prevalent among them were three POPs—heptachlor, chlordane, and

DDT—pesticides that have all been banned for years in the US. It's pretty

obvious that these chemicals hang around for a LONG time without breaking down

into less toxic compounds.

 

POPs are also particularly troublesome because they often accumulate in the body

fat of animals and people and can be are passed from mother to fetus.

 

Progress on eliminating POPs has been a mixed bag. Some POPs have already been

banned by individual countries, but most are still used or manufactured

SOMEWHERE on the planet.

 

Because they can travel long distances via wind or water, their manufacture and

use anywhere on the planet is a threat to living beings EVERYWHERE. To address

the POPs issue on a global scale, the Stockholm Convention was crafted in 2001.

 

It has been signed by over 150 countries and is well on its way to being

ratified into law by the required minimum of 50 countries. The treaty initially

only gives the boot to a dozen of the worst POPs, but it has mechanisms to allow

the banishment of additional bad-actor chemicals in the future. This point has

caused US chemical companies a certain level of consternation, and their

political allies have worked to stall and weaken the treaty's ratifying

legislation.

 

The chemicals to be eliminated by the Stockholm Convention are a good start, but

ONLY a good start—many other chemicals are deserving of stricter control or

elimination. With 71,000 chemicals registered for use, it seems that we ought to

be able to figure out how to live without the worst of them— " la crème de la

crud. " So, does your senator support passage of the Stockholm Convention treaty?

 

Resources:

 

POPs page - from Pesticide Action Network North America

International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN)

 

 

" The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the

contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal

materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil

it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues

is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the

environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of

radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life.

"

 

— Rachel Carson