Organization and Outcomes of Four Rounds of Interlaboratory Assessments on Persistent Organic Pollutants

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been shown to adversely impact human health and the environment. Concern over POPs is also attributed to their stability and persistence in the environment, potential to undergo long-range transport, and to accumulate in animals, humans and food chains. Men and women differ in their physiological susceptibility to the effects of exposure to POPs and exposure can be impacted by societal and occupation roles (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP] 2019). The objective of the Stockholm Convention (SC) on POPs is to protect human health and the environment from POPs with the ultimate goal to eliminate them, where feasible. Accurately measuring and analyzing of the concentrations POPs is an important step towards evaluating the effectiveness of the convention and the potential impacts of POPs in human and the environment. The interlaboratory assessment accompanies the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) capacity building programme for laboratories analysing POPs. The programme implements the recommendations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Stockholm Convention as expressed in the Guidance on the global monitoring plan for POPs (hereinafter referred to as the guidance document) in article 16 of the Convention.