Geneva, Switzerland, from 24 to 28 January 2022

Venue: Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG), 17 rue de Varembé, Geneva, Switzerland.

Highlights

At its seventeenth meeting, the Committee adopted the risk management evaluation on methoxychlor and recommended to the Conference of the Parties that it consider listing the chemical in Annex A to the Convention without specific exemptions. The recommendation will be considered by the Conference of the Parties at its eleventh meeting in 2023.

The Committee adopted the risk profiles for Dechlorane Plus and UV-328, moving the chemicals to the next review stage requiring risk management evaluations, that includes an analysis of possible control measures. 

The Committee also agreed that chlorpyrifos, chlorinated paraffins with carbon chain length of C14 and chlorination levels at or exceeding 45 per cent chlorine by weight, and long-chain perfluorocarboxylic acids, their salts and related compounds met the screening criteria in Annex D and decided to review the respective proposals further and to prepare draft risk profiles in accordance with Annex E to the Convention.

The Committee furthermore established intersessional working groups on decabromodiphenyl ether and short-chain chlorinated to update the reports on the review of information related to specific exemptions for those chemicals. The Committee agreed on the terms of reference for the assessment of alternatives to perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), its salts and perfluorooctane sulfonyl fluoride (PFOSF) and established an intersessional working group to undertake the activities according to the evaluation process. With regard to its review of an indicative list of substances covered by the listing of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), its salts and PFOA-related compounds, the Committee provided comments on the updated indicative list and recommended that the Conference of the Parties consider requesting the Secretariat, in consultation with the Committee, to further update the indicative list taking into account information from Parties and observers, and to make the updated indicative list available on the Convention website. Finally, the Committee requested the intersessional working group on long-range environmental transport to further develop the draft document on the consideration of long-range environmental transport.

Working languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.