Though the term Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) is a relatively new one, the chemicals that it encompasses are not. Instead, what’s notable about this new category of pollutant is the fact that for the first time the many existing toxic compounds it includes have been grouped together under a single label. This shift marks an important change in the way we think about chemicals, the pollution they create, and the ways in which we might we regulate them.

Ever since synthetic chemicals first began to be mass produced in the early 20th century, they have been largely regulated on a case-by-case basis. When there were only a handful of compounds being manufactured in small amounts, this piecemeal approach worked reasonably well. But the swift growth of the chemical industry and the avalanche of new materials it unleashed soon rendered this strategy ineffective. Today, there are over 70,000 different chemical compounds in production and some 6 trillion total pounds being manufactured in the U.S. each year. Yet in spite of this variety and volume, an obsolete one-chemical-at-a-time approach to regulation continues.

Creating a new category of chemicals called POPs represents the critical first step toward developing a better and more effective regulatory system, one based not on controlling chemicals individually, but on regulating entire classes of compounds with a single set of rules. The POP category takes this approach one step further by using a new and different set of parameters to determine whether or not to assign this label to a particular chemical. Previously, science and government alike tended to group compounds together according to their chemical similarities. Membership in the POP family of chemicals, on the other hand, is determined by how a specific chemical behaves in the environment and in the human body.

POPs include many pesticides, industrial chemicals like PCBs, organochlorines, and by-products of a variety of manufacturing and waste incineration processes like dioxins. Because it is a new kind of chemical category based on health and environmental effects, not chemistry, any compound can be labeled a POP as long as it has these characteristics:

It resists biodegradation and therefore persists in the environment.
It builds up in body fat and accumulates in ever higher levels as it migrates up the food chain.
It travels efficiently throughout the atmosphere and global waters.
Many POPs are linked to serious hormonal, reproductive, neurological and/or immune disorders.

For more information about POPs visit:

Greenpeace International
www.greenpeace.org

International POPs Elimination Network
www.ipen.org

United Nations Environmental Program
www.chem.unep.ch

Environmental Research Foundation
www.rachel.org