The RECETOX organized four rounds of online consultations with persistent organic pollutants (POPs) monitoring experts in Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America and Caribbean to facilitate their task in preparing the third regional reports under the Global Monitoring Plan of the Stockholm Convention on POPs. The regional reports are reflecting occurrence, levels and observed time trends for POPs listed in the Annexes of the Stockholm Convention. Documents comprise data until 2019 inclusive, where available. Currently, the expert drafting work is ongoing and results thereof will be released for the Stockholm Convention COP10 in 2021.
The meetings organized on 7 and 16 July 2020 included discussions with global experts on harmonization of data, missing datasets, needed outputs and served also as tutorials. The SCRC/RECETOX, IT experts along with data analysts reviewed new POPs datasets collected in last six years and presented new visualization tools in maps, charts and tables. These tools embedded in the updated robust GMP data warehouse will facilitate understanding of the complex information by non-experts and support decision making worldwide.
Kateřina Šebková, the SCRC director, commented the meetings: “We were very pleased by the feedback received, joint work on the dataset scope and continuity. The discussion also contributed to the intensified cooperation and co-design of the data warehouse updates. We have more monitoring data providers on board, more datasets and we were also able to better link some previous datasets with the new ones. All these time-consuming actions allow all of us, and namely the regional experts, to prepare more precise outputs for the decision makers.”
The regional experts are using the online data warehouse that was designed jointly with the world POPs experts, secretariat of the Stockholm Convention and the RECETOX research infrastructure since 2010 and was put in place in its second update in 2014. Currently, the third update/edition reflecting changes in the Stockholm Convention and the global information exchange needs was released for POPs experts. The full public access and use will be allowed once the expert work finishes.
We would also like to acknowledge the support for the work received from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme projects e-shape (grant agreement 820852) and TEAMING (grant agreement No. 857560, CETOCOEN Excellence).
Footnote: GMP DWH is an electronic tool established in 2012, consisting of complex data repository, analytical tools and visualization platform. See more at www.pops-gmp.org
The Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC) has a new member. For the first time, the Czech Republic was represented by the RECETOX scientist Katarína Řiháčková at the international meeting on global regulation of toxic substances.
Masaryk University, in cooperation with the RECETOX research center, organized an international scientific symposium on current environmental and health crises.
