CHEMICALS
CHEMICALS
An Introduction to Chemicals
The release of persistent toxic substances (PTS) into the environment and the resulting contamination is a major environmental and health issue for the 21st Century.
While, most chemicals find their way into the environment via various products and processes, it is those that persist for long periods of time or break down into other persistent chemicals that represent our real chemical legacy and burden.
Some persistent toxic organic substances are already being addressed by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants 2001. However, there are many others that are persistent in the environment, traveling long distances from where they originated through air, water and living organisms and consequently circulating the globe. As they become increasingly concentrated in the tissues of animals at higher levels of the food chain, such as predatory birds and mammals, including humans, the result is our exposure to an ever growing cocktail of contaminants that makeup our chemical body burden.
In this section of the Handbook, we look at the chemicals that are persistent organic pollutants or POPs, chemicals that could be considered as candidate POPs and other persistent, toxic and bioaccumulative chemicals.
IPEN Body Burden Community Monitoring Handbook - 2005
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