January 25, 1999
Web posted at: 4:31 p.m. EST (2131 GMT)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Delegates from more than 100 countries gathered Monday to begin negotiating the first global treaty to ban 12 toxic chemicals known as "the dirty dozen."

They were to discuss whether a total ban on persistent organic pollutants, known as POPs, is feasible, and negotiate a process for implementing a treaty.

Some provisions of the treaty were likely to include technical and financial assistance to countries, especially those in the southern hemisphere, to help them shift to environmentally safe alternatives.

The five-day meeting at the headquarters of the U.N. Environment Program opened with environmentalists and the chemical industry at odds over whether to ban the 12 toxic chemicals which include pesticides such as DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl Trichloroethane) and industrial chemicals such as dioxin and PCBs that have been linked to cancer, birth defects and other genetic and developmental abnormalities.

The conference is the second of five scheduled U.N. negotiating sessions on POPs. A diplomatic conference in Stockholm will follow, probably in spring 2001, to adopt the convention, John Buccini, chairman of treaty's negotiating committee, told reporters last week in New York.

"These chemicals have a very long life and have the ability to travel thousand of miles and are linked to birth defects, development abnormalities and acute poisoning in human and wildlife," Clifton Curtis, director of World Wildlife Fund's Global Toxic Initiative, said in Nairobi.

Curtis said DDT is of special concern to the WWF and said the organization is calling for a phaseout by 2007 and for use only as a "pesticide of last resort" until then.

Although banned in the developed world in 1972 because of the danger it poses to wildlife and human health, DDT is still used to control mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects in many of developing nations.

Curtis said the WWF plans to release a report in Nairobi on Wednesday outlining enough scientific evidence of hazards to humans and wildlife to justify a global ban on DDT.

He said the latest findings prove that malaria-bearing mosquitoes have developed resistance to it the chemical.

The organization issued a report last June claiming that alternatives such as chemically treated mosquito nets and environmentally friendly pest control are available and effective.

But Curtis admitted a major goal of the POPs treaty under negotiation is to make sure that alternatives are studied for their safety and that funding is provided to help less affluent nations make the change from DDT and other POPs.

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