Cancer-causing PCB chemicals still being produced despite 40-year-old ban
▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/08/cancer-causing-pcb-chemicals-still-produced-despite-40-year-old-ban
Research seen by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations shows that PCBs are being produced as byproducts in chemical reactions, which means small proportions of them are present in many chemicals used today.
“This is staggering given that production of PCBs was banned over 40 years ago and we are supposed to be eliminating them under the Stockholm convention,” said the environmental forensic scientist Dr Dave Megson from Manchester Metropolitan University, who conducted the study.
“When we take into account the volumes of these chemicals and the small levels of PCBs within them then this adds up to a massive number – around 45,000 tonnes per year in the US alone.” During peak commercial production in the 1970s about 39,000 tonnes were made each year, states the study.
“Most people associate this accidental production of PCBs with paints and pigments, but our research shows it’s much broader than that,” said Megson. Chlorinated solvents, which are used in chemical manufacturing, are a major source according to the research.
“PCBs are currently going undetected in many studies as the specific PCBs produced accidentally are different from the PCBs that were produced intentionally in the commercial mixtures of 50-plus years ago.”
The study says these kinds of by-product PCBs are not measured in many existing monitoring programmes and may pose a “growing, unmonitored environmental and human health risk”. It suggests they should be classified as “a pollutant of emerging concern” and that they need to be addressed urgently as all PCBs are considered toxic, not just legacy PCBs from commercial mixtures.
Lee Bell from the international chemicals NGO network who is also a member of the Stockholm convention PCB expert group said: “Not a lot of effort has been made in regulating unintentional production of PCB from chemical manufacture. In the case of intentional PCB production, the parties to the convention have a deadline to eliminate all stockpiles of old PCB by 2028. They are woefully behind on this task and about 80% of PCB stockpiles have yet to be destroyed."
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“_It is disappointing that hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to destroy legacy PCBs while regulators allow unintentional PCB contamination to spread virtually unabated.”
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PCB production was banned in the US in 1979 and in 1981 in the UK, and work to restrict their use in electrical equipment in the UK is continuing. Sources of legacy pollution from commercially made PCBs include landfills and materials in buildings.