A pesticide the Stockholm Convention covers: Endosulfan and the Persistent Organic Pollutants, as Kerala clears its stockpile

Background

Eight firms have put in Expressions of Interest to neutralise and dispose of the old Endosulfan stocks lying in Plantation Corporation of Kerala godowns at Kasaragod and Mannarkkad, a clean-up revived by a National Green Tribunal intervention. The Expressions of Interest were invited by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board, and the Plantation Corporation is to meet the cost. Endosulfan is one of the pesticides the Stockholm Convention deals with. That Convention is a multilateral treaty to protect human health and the environment from the chemicals known as POPs, or persistent organic pollutants. Such chemicals do harm to human health or to the environment, and three things make them hard to be rid of: they stay intact in the environment for long periods, they spread widely across geography, and they build up in the fatty tissue of humans and of wildlife. The Stockholm Convention is administered alongside two sister agreements on chemicals and waste, the Basel Convention and the Rotterdam Convention.