U.S. backs ban on 'dirty dozen' toxic chemicals

Knight Ridder Newspapers
Published Friday, April 20, 2001

WASHINGTON-- Most of the ''dirty dozen'' toxic chemicals whose manufacture and use the Bush administration wants to ban worldwide have not been made or sprayed in the United States for a decade or longer.

They are used in other countries, however, and because their residues travel in wind and water around the world, ''they pose a health and environmental threat, no matter where in the world they're allowed to spread,'' Bush said. They are also persistent chemicals that accumulate in the body, so exposure gets worse with time.

In addition, a key provision of the treaty Bush endorsed in a Rose Garden ceremony Thursday would allow new chemicals -- some of them now manufactured and used in the United States -- to be banned or drastically limited worldwide. That's only if they fall under certain guidelines and tests confirm their hazards.

European nations already are proposing bans on several additional chemicals.

The Clinton administration negotiated the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The treaty, negotiated among 122 governments last December, has not been signed or ratified. The first chance to sign it will come at a multinational ceremony in Stockholm in May. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman will sign for the United States. Then Bush promises to send it to the Senate for ratification.

The treaty requires countries to stop producing or using the banned chemicals, or, in rare cases, to severely limit them. Use of DDT, for example, will still be permitted, but only for fighting malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

''Concerns over the hazards of PCBs, DDT, and the other toxic chemicals covered by the agreement are based on solid scientific information,'' Bush said.

''These pollutants are linked to developmental defects, cancer, and other grave problems in humans and animals. The risks are great, and the need for action is clear.

''We must work to eliminate, or at least to severely restrict, the release of these toxins without delay.''

The 12 chemicals covered are the insecticides aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, DDT, heptachlor, mirex and toxaphene; the rat poison endrin and the fungicide hexachlorobenzene; and PCBs, dioxin and furans.

Brooks Yeager, who as assistant secretary of state for environmental affairs under Clinton negotiated the treaty, said, ''this is a treaty designed to grow over time. This is kind of the first line of suspects. There clearly will be more.''


Among those likely to be targeted next are the pesticides kepone and lindane -- already banned in the United States -- and the fire retardant hexabromobiphenyl. Also likely to come under pressure is a chemical called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons released in the burning of oil, coal and other organic materials.

Yeager, a Washington-based vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, said the treaty had ''very broad support, not just from the environmental community, but also from the chemical community.''

The key to the treaty is ''practicality,'' said Mike Walls, senior counsel for the American Chemistry Council, a lobby group for U.S. chemical companies that helped shape the treaty's language.


(c) 2001, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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