Swedish National Implementation Plan for the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants : Update 2020 to include substances listed 2017 and 2019

Open Access

Abstract

The Stockholm Convention was adopted in 2001 with the objective to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants. According to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, each Party to the Convention is to develop and endeavour to implement a plan for the implementation of its obligations under the Convention. The Swedish national implementation plan aims at describing what Sweden has done and intends to do to fulfil the obligations of the Stockholm Convention. The plan describes the situation in Sweden and presents actions and strategies for future work. This plan is the fifth in the scheme and contains updates in accordance with the decisions taken at the Conferences of the Parties in 2017 and 2019. The substances covered are short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCP), decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its salts and PFOA-related compounds and dicofol. For all other substances we refer to the Swedish national implementation plan from 2017, Swedish EPA Report 6794. Sweden will continue to work actively to minimise the environmental and health impacts of POPs in national, regional and international fora. As Party to the Stockholm Convention, Sweden is required to ban, and/or take the necessary legal and administrative steps to ban the production, use, import and export of SCCP, decaBDE, PFOA, its salts and PFOA-related compounds and dicofol and to take measures to reduce the unintentional production of HCBD. Sweden supported the inclusion of these substances in the Convention. According to the Products Register there was in 2018 no production or import of any of the substances as chemical products with a concentration above the limit values for registration. For PFOA-related compounds there is limited information from the Products Register. Sweden implements the requirements of the Stockholm Convention mainly through existing legislation, strategies and programmes. Significant progress has been achieved since production and use of all POP substances is prohibited with some minor exemptions. The main remaining challenges identified in previous implementation plans are linked to dioxins, PCBs and PFASs including PFOA and PFOS, which is elaborated in the Swedish Implementation Plan from 2017. This new plan focuses on the newly added substances to the Convention where the main challenges are related to SCCPs, PFOA and decaBDE in articles in use and in the waste stream, and to develop efficient environmental monitoring of these substances.