Monday, May 09, 2005

Organized Bad Ideas

Environment News Service (ENS) contains a piece on the recent convention on persistant organic pollutants (POPs). They seem to have some sort of mechanism to "nominate" and vote on chemicals to be banned. (Sort of like nomininations for service awards?). Among the "worries" are banning certain pesticides that have continuing and valuable use in disease control, particularly in developing nations. PVC is on the "to be banned" list include, because if you burn it, it might produce small amounts of dioxins. (Really bad stuff, them dioxins, they give you chloracne in huge doses. Check out the Ukranian election mess.)

The Stockholm convention seems hell-bent for banning chemicals that reduce disease in developing nations and can be used to transport water for the same folks. Wonder what they are really trying to prevent?

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