The Evaluation Of Mobile And Stationary Facilities For The Destruction Of Pcbs

In 1990, the federal government and the four Atlantic provincial governments signed an agreement committing them to select a site for a mobile PCB incinerator in one of the Atlantic provinces to destroy PCBs currently stored in that region. The federal government found two candidate sites for the incinerator facility and prepared an initial environmental evaluation. The five governments appointed an independent committee to recommend an appropriate PCB destruction technology and a preferred site for the unit, based on a review of the environmental evaluation, public consultations, and professional judgement. This report presents the results of the committee's consideration of the environmental evaluation and the reactions from the public on siting the facility. Topics considered in the review include alternative siting approaches, the assessment and review process, the regulation of PCBs, and public perceptions of risks associated with PCBs.

Since the mid 1990s, legal action to eliminate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has started resulting in a global Convention on POPs, the Stockholm Convention, and a regional Protocol under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (UN-ECE LRTAP Convention). POPs are characterized by long half-lives, persistence in the environment, they undergo long-range transport, accumulate in the environment and in biota, and they are toxic. The combination of these characteristics makes them a threat at the global level. This book makes the reader familiar with the goals of these two conventions, lays out characteristics of these compounds, presents results from case studies and addresses inventories, levels in humans and the environment as well as technologies to destroy them.