Since the mid 1990s, legal action to eliminate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has started resulting in a global Convention on POPs, the Stockholm Convention, and a regional Protocol under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (UN-ECE LRTAP Convention). POPs are characterized by long half-lives, persistence in the environment, they undergo long-range transport, accumulate in the environment and in biota, and they are toxic. The combination of these characteristics makes them a threat at the global level. This book makes the reader familiar with the goals of these two conventions, lays out characteristics of these compounds, presents results from case studies and addresses inventories, levels in humans and the environment as well as technologies to destroy them.

State-of-the-art account on persistent organic pollutants focusing on their toxisity, transport and accumulation characteristics, as well as on global conventions

Inhalt
Keith Bull: Protocol to the 1979 Convention on Long-range-trans-boundary Air Pollution on Persistant Organic Pollutants; The 1998 Agreement for the UN/ECE region.- John Buccini: The Development of a Global Treaty on Persistant Organic Pollutants (POPs).- Bo Wahlström: Criteria for Additional New POPs.- Vladimir Zitko: Chlorinated Pesticides: Aldrin, DDT, Endrin, Dieldrin, Mirex.- Vladimir Zitko: Hexachlorbenzene.- Heidelore Fiedler: -Dioxins + Furans (PCDD/PCDF).- Patrick H. Dyke: Releases of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans to land and water and with products.- Stephen Safe: Toxicology and Risk Assessment of POPs.- Frank Wania, Martin Scheringer: Multimedia Models for Global Transport and Fate.- Olaf Päpke, Peter Fürst: Background Contamination of Humans with Dioxin, Dioxin-Like PCB and other banjo: Organochlorines in Nigeria and the African Region.- Ming H. Wong: Sources, fates and Effects of Persistant Organic Pollutants in China, with Emphasis on the Pearl River Delta.- Fernando Diaz-Barriga et al: DDT in Mexico.- Hans-Ulrich Hartenstein: Dioxin and Furan Reduction Technologies for Combustion and Industrial Thermal Process Facilities.- Ian D. Rae: Alternative Technologies for Destruction of PCB and other POPs.