Comm: "Some of the world's worst toxic pollutants are travelling the globe, largely unseen, and are, in tiny amounts, in us all.

"In early December, in South Africa, more than 120 countries will meet to decide the world's defence against PCBs, DDT and 10 other POPs or Persistent Organic Pollutants.

"In use for years, poisonous, and long lasting, it's time they were finally dealt with.

"But in an unequal world, are alternatives out of reach and what if emissions can't be stopped without massive investment? And what have been the effects on our lives of chemicals that are now in us all?"

Lynn Goldman: "At greatest risk are children, because children are rapidly growing and developing, and the effects POPs can have on the body tend to affect the systems that are involved with children's development, whether its development of their brain, immune system or endocrine system and that exposure is relatively greater."

Comm: "So what are these poisonous chemicals, What needs to done, and will the treaty about to be completed, solve the problems?

"(Southern Sweden) In the 1920's the process of electrifying the world needed cheap, inert, insulation. Poly chlorinated biphenyls or PCB's were hailed as a universal answer.

"Decades later their toxic risks were discovered, but not before millions of tonnes were installed in electrical equipment all over the globe."

Dr. Lars Hagmar: "It was in Sweden that the PCB problem was discovered. It was in 1966 and then it could be understood what had happened to the wildlife, during that period, that the seals could have conceived. If you haven't taken care of the PCB oils in an old transformer or capacitor, or you've put it in the sewage, or tried to burn it or something like that - they have been diffusely spread into the environment. That was happening all over the world."

Comm: "Found to be toxic and carcinogenic, and leaking from ageing transformers. PCBs were ending up in seas, such as the Baltic, where they were absorbed by plankton. Because they don't readily break down, PCBs get passed into fish that eat the plankton. Bigger fish then eat the smaller ones and so on up the food chain until the fish are eaten by humans.

"The wives of Swedish fishermen were passing PCBs onto their children before they were born, and through breast milk afterwards. The mainstay of their diet - fish from the Baltic."

Swedish fisherman: "As we saw the effects on the birds and seals, the deformation of the larvae - we told the authorities."

Comm: "Sweden banned PCBs in 1972 and did a through job of removing every possible drop from substations and other sources."

Dr. Lars Hagmar: "But we see an effect on the birth weight, indicating that something was going on."

Comm: "Researchers found, perhaps for the first time, a link between environmental cause and effect. The health damage done by PCBs is decreasing, now that PCBs have been banned and cleaned up.

"Yet the Baltic still has PCBs and other POPs coming from other sources. POPs are a global problem, requiring a global solution."

Rondonia, Brazil

Comm: "One pollutant is proving much harder to ban and clean up. DDT, was used for years as a pesticide. Often sprayed from the air, DDT was a hammer to crack a nut - it's very toxic and very long lasting. It's also good at killing the mosquitoes that carry malaria.

"In Brazil, DDT used to be used with impunity to control pests on crops or mosquitoes that endanger health."

Prof. Hildebrand Centro de Pesquisa em Medicina Tropical, Port Velho: "In the Amazon region the campaign was completely unsuccessful. Because the Amazon region is very peculiar, first, the population is very dispersed. Second the kind of housing they have, is not appropriate for spraying, because they have a lot of holes, sometimes not even walls, sometimes you just the cover and so the control of malaria was completely a failure."

Comm: "When Amazonia was opened up from the 60's onwards, the problem got a lot worse. Thousands of settlers invaded from the North and the incidence of malaria exploded. The rain forest was ruthlessly exploited. By the 80's when a gold rush started, malaria was endemic.

Prof. Hildebrand. Intv.

"The number of cases that was 40,000 increased to 500,000 cases a year more or less.

"Something had to done.

"DDT use stopped by 1997 and the emphasis shifted to a broad strategy.

"Malaria, after all, is a human disease that's carried by people, so treating the sufferers is now the first defence against transmission.

"At the Tropical Diseases Clinic in Rondonia, people can be tested for malaria at anytime day or night. And they get the results within half hour.

"Treating malaria, if caught early enough, is a matter of a course of cloraquin pills.

"Once people have been treated, it's the turn of their houses. Today synthetic forms of pyrethrum are sprayed. Less toxic and biodegradable, they're used in a more targeted way. Only houses where malaria has broken out are sprayed, inside and out.

"Treating the disease is harder in the countryside.

"Dr. Rui Durlurcher is called out to a tiny community of settlers on the edge of the Amazonian Rainforest. 4 of the children have malaria.

"One of the mothers shows Dr Rui the probable mosquito breeding ground."

Brazilian mother: "I'm 37 and it's the first time I've caught it, and it's the first time the kids have caught it."

Comm: "These children are lucky - they're within the clinic's research area, where exactly how malaria infects people is studied.

"The strategy now includes sanitation, medical treatment and spraying as a set of tools to combat malaria."

Prof. Hildebrand: "To integrate this we need to understand and study the local conditions of transmission and the local reservoirs of infection and the local number of new cases that appear."

Comm: "Professor Hildebrand and his doctors research exactly how the human parasite that is malaria moves and infects.

"A lot isn't understood, such as why people can have the disease without showing any symptoms.

"And the more that is discovered, the more can be done to fight it, such as attacking mosquito larvae."

Prof. Hildebrand: "Biological larvicides could be used and control the density of larvae, while not interfering with toxicity that might be introduced into the pool."

Comm: "DDT may still be used here illegally, imported from Paraguay, by farmers, but as a control of malaria carrying mosquitoes, it's of no use - at least in Brazil.

"Elsewhere the chemical is a cheap, effective tool for countries that can afford little else. Many countries have moved away from its use, aware of the damage DDT does to the environment, but today, a worldwide ban when malaria is on the increase, would cost lives and isn't yet possible. DDT still has a role to play.

"Meanwhile, DDT that was sprayed years ago is still with us, and is being passed onto the next generation, through mother's breast milk."

Victoria Falls, Zambia

Comm: "Zambia, is but one country where Western governments are trying to make amends for a policy that gave farmers agrochemicals, but that had unforeseen consequences.

"Half of this load of abandoned pesticides is thought to have been washed into this drain - and into a source of drinking water.

"Banned in the west, pesticides such as DDT, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Endrin and Heptachlor were once seen as a boon for growing food in poor countries.

"These agrochemicals were donated to farmers as aid. But farmers received little training in their safe use and many preferred not to try them."

Alemayehu Wodageneh: "Some of these pesticides have been sitting for 20,25, 30 years. Endangering the lives and the livelihood of the people."

Comm: "The German aid agency GTZ discovered the dangers and found 360 tonnes at 7 sites all over Zambia.

"Covered in polythene, these decaying poisons need a permanent solution.

A $1.2 million clean-up contracted a British company to remove and repack the obsolete chemicals.

"It took 8 shipping containers of special equipment, including this flame-proof drum crusher.

"Protective clothing is essential

"Inches of DDT dust were found in this warehouse. Unaware of the danger, children came in here to play.

"In the end, all trace of these toxic agrochemicals were sent to be incinerated,

But thousands of tonnes of dangerous pesticides remain in Africa - a legacy from continents away."

Alemayehu Wodageneh: "Help has to come from developed countries, and they should take back some of these pesticides, at least for destruction, I mean you don't say that part of the planet is yours and it doesn't come to me, and this part of the planet is mine but we are mingled you see, we live together."

Bangkok, Thailand

Comm: "For many countries doing anything about the next pollutants are going to be difficult.

"Created unintentionally in combustion, especially industrial burning, are Dioxins and Furans, thought to be some of the most lethal substances known."

Jarupong Boon-Long, Thailand Dioxin Project: "Dioxin and Furans is one of the most dangerous by product chemicals, it can cost you, it's a carcinogen, causing cancer, in a very small amount. You're talking about a millionth of a million. It's not a part per million but a million of a million that could be a part of your health."

"Thailand has been given aid as a developing nation to look at it's dioxin problems. They appear in unexpected places.

"This is a cremation ceremony - traditional in Thailand, few people are buried, but the process creates dioxins and furans."

Jarupong Boon-Long: "Now we have more than 700 incinerators.

"Around the country and I believe they are not in a good condition. After we find this problem we have to control them. "

Comm: "Any uncontrolled incineration produces dioxins but especially problematic is the burning of hospital waste, with the high likelihood that chlorine is being consumed - chlorine is part of the dioxin and furan mix.

"But nobody knows exactly how they're formed and nobody knows how much of a problem they are for Thailand.

"Foreign aid is funding one of the first dioxin monitoring projects in developing countries.

"It'll provide a picture of the problem, a model that can then be used in other places."

Jarupong Boon-Long: "This is not going to be easy, very very hard, It needs both expertise and both financial, because everything related to dioxins and furans is very very expensive. "

Comm: "Following a nationwide survey, a typical range of industries, thought to be generating dioxins and furans, are sampled. Once known, sources can be modified. Knowing the problem is half the battle."

Jarupong Boon-Long: "We try to take all measures we can to reduce and eliminate dioxins and furans, not by elimination of the chemical itself, but we try and eliminate the source of dioxin and furan."

Comm: "All over the world, power stations, incinerators, foundries, smelters, cars, stoves even open fires produce dioxins. Total elimination is simply not possible but prevention might be."

Dr. David Stone, Arctic Monitoring: "Even with the most complicated technology in place in the western world it is quite a challenge to ensure there is no dioxin release from a incinerator. For the type of waste disposal that is available for much of the world, we just have to accept the fact that this type of incineration is probably an enormous source of dioxins to our atmosphere and ultimately to everybody."

Nunavut, Canada

Comm: "Uninvited, and more than anywhere else, POPs arrive in the once pristine Arctic north of Canada to threaten the way of life of the Inuit."

Meeka Kilabuk: "We are under a threat of many types of pollution that are not made by us here."

Ben Kovie, Nunavut Wildlife Management: "We are starting to see more abnormalities in species, in seals, caribou, parasites in polar bears, so we are starting to see all these changes."

Meeka Mike, outfitter: "We don't know if we're eating pollutants as well, and if this cycle, or the pollutants are going into our cycle, you're going to break the whole circle of the earth."

Comm: "More than half of all Inuit women have levels of POPs above those regarded as safe by the World Health Organization."

Bernice Kootoo: "They had something posted for contaminated meat, and I thought about it, but it wasn't going to stop me breast feeding.

"Breast feeding is still recommended as beneficial. And so too, are country foods, traditionally fished and hunted."

Meeka Mike: "We'd be looking for ring seals and harp seals for dog food, but ring seals for ourselves, for our food and clothing material."

Comm: "The Inuit have little choice but to eat their traditional foods - the very sort that store and accumulate POPs in their fatty tissues - foods such as caribou, whale and seal. Nor do they want to change - it's their way of life."

Meeka Kilabuk: "This is seal meat, fresh seal meat, richest of all other meats because you're going to get warm cheeks, warm feet, warm personality from eating the seal meat!

"Most people believe that none of us get cold because we're used to it - of course we get cold too! But if you eat frozen char or frozen something because it warms you up quicker, hot soup is not going to do it or hot coffee is not going to do it."

Sheila Watt-Cloutier Inuit Circumpolar Conference: "It's not just about contaminants in out country food but what is connected to that and the way of life and the hunting
We are a people who have respected and lived in harmony with our land and wildlife and our resources all around us."

Johannesburg - South Africa

Comm: "In South Africa, in December, the United Nations Environment Programme will bring together some 120 countries to decide the fate of the worst Persistent Organic Pollutants.

"After intergovernmental meetings in Montreal, Nairobi, Geneva, and Bonn, the stage is set for final agreement in Johannesburg. Agreement won't be easy, but this year is the deadline and it won't come a moment too soon.

John Buccini, Chair of the POPs Treaty meeting: "Even if we had a magic wand, and we were able to stop every molecule of POP from today, it would take generations for us to see any real benefit in terms of a dramatically different level in our bodies, or my grandchildren's or my grandchildren's grandchildren for that matter. So I have had a sense of urgency that we really do need to address it and address it now."

Lyn Goldman: "What ever level we have now, if we continue to pollute the world with POPs we will see higher and higher and higher levels of exposure for future generations and we can completely prevent that if we try."

Comm: "After five years of build up, the last barrier to agreement is how the rich countries of the west are going to help those that can't afford, or don't have the expertise to deal with persistent organic pollutants."

John Buccini: "What they need is the know how the expertise to come in and whether that's on legislation , whether that's on malaria programs, whether that's on hazardous waste programs on how to deal with PCBs so there's a wide range of technical assistance that they have asked for and which I believe the developed countries will have to be able to provide in order to get the developing countries on board on the convention."

Comm: "There's now consensus that the world wants a treaty that finally controls man's worst pollutants.

"Just how much money is available and how it's going to be provided is the last stumbling block."

Klaaus Toepfer, UNEP: "Now is the time to make decisions - let us work together with mutual respect to achieve global actions to safeguard our planet and our society in the new millenium."