Data from Asia and Pacific contains information on POPs concentrations in ambient air, human tissue - breast milk and surface water; for water-soluble fluorinated POPs only (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, its salts and perfluorooctane sulfonyl fluoride).
The data was mainly collected over the period between 2008 and 2014. However, some earlier data related to the historical importance were presented and briefly described.
Asia-Pacific Region is located in tropical, sub-tropical temperate and sub-arctic climate area, with many countries under the strong influence of the monsoon climate. The region is characterized by huge agricultural and industrial activities to support large number of people, about 59% of the world population.
In the Asia-Pacific Region, several international and national POPs monitoring programmes on air and human milk are available. For the air, passive sampling was conducted in Fiji in collaboration with RECETOX (Centre of Excellence in Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Brno, Czech Republic). In POPs Monitoring Project in East Asian Countries which is initiated by Japan, sampling was operated in ten countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). In China and Japan, some ambient POPs air monitoring programmes are performed. For human milk, China (including Hong Kong SAR of China), Fiji, Kiribati, Philippines and Tonga have been involved in 3rd or 4th round WHO human milk survey. China, India and Japan also have some national POPs monitoring programmes on human milk and/or blood.
In addition to data on core media, the monitoring data on non-core media, such as water, were also collected.
The region collaborated with the following programmes and strategic partners to obtain data on core media:
• Chemicals in Environment (Ministry of the Environment, Japan)
• China National POPs Monitoring
• Environmental Survey of Dioxins (Ministry of the Environment, Japan)
• GMP UNEP - WHO Milk Survey
• POPs Monitoring Project in East Asian Countries
• UNU (United Nations University, Japan)
• PFOS in water around Bangkok, data in paper of Boontanon et al. (2013)
Lineage
The POPs Global Monitoring Plan Data Warehouse (GMP DWH) has been developed by the Stockholm Convention Regional Centre in the Czech Republic through the Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment, Brno, Czech Republic (RECETOX) and the Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, under the guidance of the GMP Global Coordination Group, and based on Chapter 6 of the Guidance on the Global Monitoring Plan for Persistent Organic Pollutants relevant to data handling (UNEP/POPS/COP.6/INF/31).
The GMP Data Warehouse (DWH) is designed to work with data from a wide range of heterogeneous sources, such as national monitoring programmes or large international monitoring networks.
The data reporting model involves compiling and archiving primary GMP data within a “regional data repository” in the GMP DWH. In addition, the GMP DWH compiles and archives aggregated data, including supplementary data, in cases where no primary data is made available.
Only reliably reported concentration values can be accepted for any spatial or temporal comparison. Therefore, a multilevel evaluation procedure based on the annually aggregated concentration values is proposed in order to maintain a high predictive value of the GMP records while avoiding bias in the concentration values.
Compatible data records stored in the GMP DWH are considered by members of the respective regional organization group and validated for further use in the publication.
