Click here to get free customized information delivered to you automatically via e-mail. The treaty was adopted without a vote at a conference center. He urged all nations to ratify the pact quickly.
POPs are mostly pesticides like DDT, later shown to have dangerous side-effects on birds and humans.
Larsson noted that the inventor of DDT, Paul Hermann Mueller of Switzerland, won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The poisons linger in the environment for decades and build up in the fatty tissues of people and animals, damaging immune systems, causing cancers or even lowering sperm counts. Earlier, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, whose country holds the European Union presidency, hailed the treaty as a first step to control toxic human-made substances. EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said new chemicals would be added to the list of outlawed POPs in coming years despite U.S. worries about costs to industry. Police guarded the conference center in central Stockholm, but there were no protesters in the bright spring sunshine.