Imagine a world where every year 2 million people did not die from chemicals in the workplace, where 6,000 lead-induced premature deaths per year were prevented and where companies took full responsibility for their environmental impact on the world. This is what UN Environment is trying to achieve through the sound management of chemicals around the globe.

To accomplish this, thirty-one scientific experts of the Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions of UN Environment agreed on a list of chemicals that they propose be closely managed or eliminated at meetings that took place in Rome in September.

Chemicals and health were brought to the forefront of the discussion; UN Environment estimates that 3 per cent of the agricultural workforce suffers from acute poisoning.

At the 12th meeting of the Chemical Review Committee of the Rotterdam Convention concluding on 16 September, UN chemicals experts recommended that the severely hazardous pesticide carbofuran suspension concentrate 330 g/L be listed. Draft decision guidance documents were also finalized on two highly toxic pesticides – carbofuran and carbosulfan – used to control insects in a wide variety of crops.

Countries will decide whether to list the chemicals at the next triple Conference of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions (COPs) meetings in April and May 2017.

Two industrial chemicals were meanwhile proposed to be listed by experts forming part of the Stockholm Convention’s Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee. These included decabromodiphenyl ether, widely used flame retardants, and short-chain chlorinated paraffins, used in development of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Those particular substances have been reported to have far-reaching health impacts – traces have even been discovered in women’s breastmilk in remote sites.

According to Achim Halpaap, Chief of the UN Environment Chemicals and Waste Branch, “through a precautionary approach, human rights can be brought into chemicals and waste processes”.

The triple COPs in Geneva from 24 April-5 May next year will focus on the topic ‘A Future Detoxified: Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste’. These meetings continue to work towards a future where hazardous chemicals and waste no longer impact on health or the natural environment.

The need to address agricultural chemicals in a freshwater context was also underlined in the latest Global Environment Outlook Assessment for the Pan-European Region (GEO-6), released recently by UNEP. ‘The region’s challenges for freshwater include reducing pollution from hazardous substances and improving treatment; addressing the poor chemical status of groundwater due to agriculture; increasing water use efficiency and sustainability with integrated water resources and watershed management,’ it states.

For more information on the September meetings, or on the forthcoming triple COPs, please click here or write to charles.avis@brsmeas.org or vanessa.burrows@unep.org