Several international agreements seek to control, reduce or eliminate discharges, emissions and losses to the environment of materials that are persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Currently The UNECE Convention on the Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) and the UNEP Stockholm Convention have processes to add new substances as POPs. It should be noted that the Canadian Chemicals Management Plan (as well as the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, or REACH, in Europe) is actively determining substance properties that will potentially identify any candidate POPs, from a Canadian perspective.

Industry supports the goal of these conventions. Some of the existing and nominated substances contain chlorine, or are by-products of production processes involving chlorine. C4, the World Chlorine Council (WCC) and the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) are actively engaged in supporting these processes and are committed to the rational implementation of agreements that are ratified by governments around the world.

The processes to add new substances for international action require the member states to assess whether the substance is deemed to meet specific criteria of the convention for persistence, bio-accumulation, toxicity and long-range transboundary atmospheric transport. In addition, the review process is required to evaluate “whether sufficient information exists to suggest that a substance is likely to have significant adverse human health and/or environmental effects as a result of its long-range transboundary atmospheric transport."

The initial evaluations under each agreement have important implications for decision-making and provide insight into international chemical regulation processes. As such, C4 and WCC strongly support a process for evaluating chemicals that is transparent, science-based and objective. Efforts to dilute the criteria and/or include substances that do not clearly meet ALL of the established criteria will prevent Parties from focusing their limited resources on those substances that are real priorities at the international level, and setting such a precedent could lead to problems in the future.