Plant Protection Products
As long as pesticides were banned and restricted in Turkey, necessary measures were taken and use of pesticides like aldrin, dieldrin, heptachlor, DDT, chlordane, toxaphen have been restricted, since 1980s. Soil treatment by using aldrin and heptachlor was banned, but seed treatments were permitted. Use of DDT on vegetable and fruit trees was restricted, while use against olive moth, while the trees are in the flowering period and against prodenia in cotton were allowed. In those years, there was no decision against the use of HCH. However, as a result of using agricultural chemicals, HCH residues on plants and DDT on straws were found and so a warning has been issued to take necessary measures in 1985.
An HCH stock in Turkey is located in Derince which is a county in Kocaeli close to Sirintepe ground. There is no record in MoFAL that these chemicals had been produced for agricultural purposes. HCH is stored in Merkim Industrial Products Inc., Warehouses in 50 kg plastic bags and barrels in white powder form. The estimated amount of chemicals stored there is around 3 000 t. This material was produced by Plant Protecting Chemicals Inc. for industrial purposes. HCH was prohibited in 1985 by Law on Agricultural Pest Control and Agricultural Quarantine because of its hazardous effects on plants and human health. The last pesticide stock left in Turkey is planned to be disposed until 2017 as a component of “Elimination of POPs Stocks and Reducing Releases Project” financed by GEF.
PCBs
Apart from the updated stocks given in Section 2.3.1.3 and information on PCB contaminated sites in the first NIP of Turkey, fairly little data is present on the status of PCB pollution. According to the former inventory studies a fairly large portion of PCB containing equipments has been disposed off. As stated in the initial NIP 3 655 tons of PCB containing material and equipment has been incinerated in IZAYDAS and 15 531 tons of PCB containing material and equipment has been exported abroad to be disposed off between the years 1997 and 2007. There has been no systematic monitoring of PCBs in waste products in Turkey. Recently, in a project on management of domestic/urban wastewater treatment sludges, levels of PCBs were measured in 28 different plant sludges. None of the treatment sludges exceeded the limit of 800 ng g-1 dry weight stated in the Turkish regulatotion for use of sludge in agriculture.
On the other hand, the amounts of waste containing PCBs are inventoried in the Environmental Information System (EIS). Stocks or wastes containing PCBs were recorded into the system under the group of "PCB inventory". In 2009, the amount of PCB-laden equipment or waste registered to system was approximately 129 tons. While waste oils including PCBs, constitutes 81% of this amount, 19% resulted from PCB-laden transformers or capacitors. There is a sharp increase in the amount of transformers or capacitors containing PCBs in 2010, namely, 89% of 555 tons (Özyürek et, al., 2012). In 2011, 450 tons of PCBs were registered and 52% of this amount was PCB containing waste oil and 48% was from PCB-laden transformers or capacitors. These data clearly indicate that there is still need for detailed information on the type and characteristic of wastes including PCBs.
The detailed information about the inventories of all the POPs in the annexes of the Stockholm Convention can be accessed from NIP.
