This report outlines some key features of the international movement to protect human health and the environment and reflects on some parallel developments underway within the United States. By spotlighting state progress on POPs, this report documents Americans’ commitment to accept responsibility for POPs and to step up to the challenge. It also demonstrates how essential state and local actions can be in raising public awareness, testing policy approaches, and creating markets for safer alternatives to POPs.
To illustrate the variety of POPs efforts underway in the United States, we shine a spotlight on several approaches in three featured states. In Maine we focus on a comprehensive approach to remove mercury from products, experience in reducing dioxins emissions from industrial, institutional and backyard sources, and pioneering efforts to eliminate a class of brominated flame retardants. We highlight California’s actions to limit the pesticide lindane from pharmaceutical use, to substitute safer alternatives to brominated chemicals in the electronics sector, and legislative efforts to establish a state biomonitoring program. Finally, the Washington State experience looks at mercury and brominated compounds under the state’s innovative strategy on persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs).