Experts calls for banning of persistent organic pollutants

Accra, April 28, GNA - A plant protection expert said on Wednesday that the introduction of legislation to ban the importation, sale, transfer and use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) was in the right direction because it would help manage contaminated sites effectively. Mr Vesper Suglo, Director of the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Directorate, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, said POPs, which are chemical substances that persist in the environment and bio-accumulate through the food web, posed a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment.

They are derived from pesticides, industrial discharges and elements in electrical transformers. Mr Suglo was addressing a seminar in Accra to review the draft policy and legal issues related to the control and management of contaminated POPs sites in Ghana.

Attended by 20 representatives from civil societies and government agencies, the seminar is seeking to develop appropriate strategies for identifying sites contaminated by chemicals in the Sub-Region. Participants are expected to input and help develop a sustainable organisational agreement set up for timely and well-monitored implementation of the project.

The draft policy would be the sub-regional policy for the management of contaminated sites in the sub-region.

Mr Suglo said stakeholders would among other things review various splinter legislation on toxic chemicals management in the agencies represented and synchronize the laws to help in the management of the sites. Mr Larsey Mensah, the Director of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency who chaired the function, said POPs had been acknowledged to be among the most dangerous synthetic chemicals to the environment and caused adverse effects including death, disease and defects among human and animal.

"They accumulate in body fat and passes from mother to foetus in the womb and through breast milk. Such chemicals are easily transported from their point of release throughout the biosphere especially into the Polar regions by wind and water currents," he said.

He said in addition, "POPs can stay in the environment for a very long time without degrading; such chemicals and toxic substances pollute water bodies and agricultural lands and find their way into food substances". "For a long time the natural environment is considered and treated as a self-renewable resource, but we realize today that humanity is sowing the seed of its own destruction by the way we treat the environment," he said. Mr Mensah said although the negative effects of those chemicals affected every farmer who used pesticides and industrial workers were the most vulnerable.

To devise a means of addressing the challenge, he said, the International Community negotiated and agreed on a convention in December 2000 in Stockholm, Sweden which Ghana was a signatory. Mr Mensah said the convention among other things set out control measures covering the life cycle of POPs from production to disposal. The convention signed by delegates from 122 countries also called on all parties to prohibit and take legal action and administrative measures to eliminate the production and use of POPs, he noted.