Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is long-term challenge to mankind. While the Stockholm Convention list of industrial POPs keeps expanding, unintentionally-produced POPs (UP-POPs) from industrial and municipal/agricultural waste burning and vehicular exhaust are ubiquitous. The shift of chemical production capacity, solid/electronic waste from the northern countries to the low-latitude developing regions in the last three decades, followed by a less sound industrial production and environmental management, may have been resulting in a ‘southern tilt’ or global shift of POPs emission sources to developing countries. Monitoring POPs in the air could provide timely and sensitive signals to probe source information; in particular the development and wide application of passive air sampling (PAS) technique enables comparison studies at regional/global scale. A recent PAS campaign was organized in China to look at the contribution of unintentionally-produced polychlorinated biphenyls (UP-PCBs) to the PCBs in the atmosphere, in which a dominance of UP-PCBs (&gt;60%) was revealed in the Chinese atmosphere. PAS campaigns were also organized in several coastal cities along the 21<sup>st</sup> Maritime Silk Road (MSR), from Northeast/South/Southeast Asia to East/West Africa to investigate the current situation of POPs in the atmosphere, as well as their potential link to solid/electronic waste burning. It is suggested that an international collaboration on tracking and assessing the global ‘southern tilt’ of POPs emission regions and nexus could be of timely need.

Probing sources of persistent organic pollutants in the atmosphere of China and nexus

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.