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10th meeting of the Chemical Review Committee

02/10/2014

Wednesday (22 October): The 10th meeting of the Chemical Review Committee (CRC) of the Rotterdam Convention will take place at FAO HQ from 22 – 24 October 2014, back-to back with the 10th meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC) of the Stockholm Convention from 27–30 October 2014.
Both Committees are subsidiary technical bodies established by the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam and to the Stockholm Convention. They consist of 31government- designated experts in chemicals and pesticide risk assessment and management.
The Chemical Review Committee (CRC) of the Rotterdam Convention is established to review industrial chemicals, pesticides and pesticide formulations according to the requirements and criteria set out by the Convention in Annexes I, II and IV respectively and make recommendations to the Conference of the Parties for listing such chemicals in Annex III.
More specifically, the forthcoming CRC 10 will consider notifications of final regulatory action (FRA) for the industrial chemicals polychlorinated naphthalenes, short-chained chlorinated paraffins, and tributyltin compounds submitted under Article 5 of the Convention. The notifications of FRA for short-chained chlorinated paraffins and for polychlorinated naphthalenes as industrial chemicals were submitted by Canada and Norway, and Canada and Japan respectively, received as notifications coming from countries from two different PIC regions.
Tributyltin compounds are already included as pesticides in Annex III of the Convention based on the notifications of final regulatory actions from the European Union and Canada and a respective decision guidance document on tributyltin compounds is available. The new notification from Canada, however, relates to the use of tributyltin compounds as industrial chemicals. This is the first time the committee is dealing with dual use, i.e. a case where a chemical is considered as both, pesticide and industrial chemical.
The final review of the FRAs for the respective chemicals and all the relevant supporting documentation will take place at the 10th meeting of the Chemical Review Committee.
The Committee will also finalize the decision guidance documents for the pesticide methamidophos and for the severely hazardous pesticide formulation fenthion 640 ULV, the latter being submitted by Chad. The Conference of the Parties of the Rotterdam Convention, at their meeting in May, 2015 will then decide on whether to list these chemicals in Annex III of the Convention, making them subject to the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure, thus reducing the risk of chemicals to human health and environment, and contributing to more transparency in international trade.