Taiwan Will Never Be Absent From POPs Control

TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The United Nations held the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP4) of the Stockholm Convention May 4, 2009, where nine new chemicals were added to the Convention. Now the list has grown to include 21 persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Wang Jiunn-Iuan, Director of the EPA Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substance Management said, the so called organic pollutants, toxic substances which cannot decompose easily in environment, are highly fat soluble and have low volatility, so they can enter organisms and accumulate. Since POPs can stay in the environment and organisms for a long time, moving through air, water and migratory species, they could spread across the world, even to the North and the South Poles.

“National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants”

Because POPs could transcend national boundaries, all countries take this issue very seriously. Wang said that humans are at the end of the food chain, so pollutants accumulated in organisms would finally harm humans, increasing the rate of birth defects, infertility, intelligence decline and cancer, and undermining the immune system. Although Taiwan is not the signatory of Stockholm Convention, in view of the POPs, we attended the conferences and relevant meetings in the name of Industrial Technology Research Institute. Besides, the EPA has drafted the "National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants" to serve as a basis for domestic implementation work.

Before the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP4) of the Stockholm Convention, only 12 POP substances were on the Convention’s control list. These were Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Endrin, Heptachlor, Hexachlorobenzene, Mirex, Toxaphene, Dioxins, Furans and PCBs. Taiwan has banned eight of them, and listed the other four as partially prohibited, controlled, monitored or restricted. Take Dioxins as an example, environmental authority has set up its emission standard, and both the EPA and the Council of Agriculture have imposed restrictions.

Taiwan has done a great job in preventing and regulating PCBs. Capacitors and transformers produced after 1983 have already been made with non-PCBs materials, and research done by environmental, agriculture and health agencies show that environmental medium and bio-matrix of PCBs are in accordance with global regulation.

The EPA has set up a website (http://gis.cy1000.com.tw/Dioxin_Toxic_Instruction/Main.asp) to provide the public with relevant information and raise their awareness on POPs. Wang said that the EPA held two conferences in 2007 and 2008, inviting international experts and domestic scholars to witness our success in environmental protection hailed by the international community. Wang said that Taiwan always bears environmental issues in mind, and will always play a part to help protect the environment.