Background
In order to fulfill Stockholm Convention on Persist Organic Pollutants, realize relevant requirements on reducing and eliminating DDT usage in the production of anti-fouling paint(AFP) in National Implementation Plan for Stockholm Convention on Persist Organic Pollutants, Ministry of Environment Protection (MEP) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) cooperatively developed a Global Environmental Facility (GEF) funded “Alternatives to DDT Usage in the Production of Antifouling Paint Project” (hereinafter to be referred as “Project”).
Since the antifouling paint project inception in October 2007, a lot of works have been carried out around the selection and promotion of alternatives. The project has been successfully screened out 14 kinds of alternatives; 1,042 tons of relevant products were totally in production, sale and usage, achieving the project milestones. Three local project offices were established in Shandong, Guangdong and Ningbo and established, to assist national project team in coordination, mobilization, supervision and guidance to local project participants, stakeholders, and actively carry out baseline surveys, regulatory advocacy, awareness raising, business training, law enforcement inspection activities, who play an important role in safeguarding the effective elimination and replacement of DDT in various antifouling paint.
In order to fully achieve the project objectives and implement the relevant requirements of the "Announcement of the prohibition of the production, distribution, use, import and export of DDT, chlordane, mirex and hexachlorobenzene", a series of national and industry standards were modified or developed under the impetus of the project. "Ship hull antifouling anticorrosive system" (GB/T 6822-2007) explicitly prohibit the DDT, and the "Testing and determination of DDT in the marine antifouling paint" (GB/T 25011-2010) method was formulated accordingly. The prohibition of DDT as antifouling paint agent was also introduced in the requirements of its inspection and certification requirements by China Classification Society with reference to the related standards. In order to prevent DDT was replaced by other toxic and harmful substances, the project has developed a risk assessment methodology of antifouling paints and contributed to the standard development of the "Technical requirements for environmental labeling products antifouling paint" (HJ 2515-2012), in order to ensure no alternatives will result in a new environment pollution from the mechanism.
Before the end of the project, the project team will focus on further promoting the anti-fouling paint risk assessment methodologies and standards into the relevant inspection certification system, under the cooperation with the Chemicals Management Department in environmental protection field, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries Inspection Bureau, the China Classification Society, China Coating Association and other organizations. Two relevant agencies who are capable for environmental toxicological testing and risk assessment will be selected for a demonstration of typical anti-fouling paints on the basis of risk assessment, in order to improve national eco-toxicological testing and environmental risk assessment capabilities, provide industry-wide training, and promote the application of risk assessment methodologies in enterprises during the new product development, production, distribution and use. Meanwhile, the project will increase publicity education and enforcement efforts, continue to carry out incentive programs to encourage the production, distribution and use of alternatives by the relevant production companies, distribution companies, and consumer businesses or individuals, expand market share of alternative technologies in the industry, encourage technical cooperation between enterprises, and expand the actual application, under the support of local project office support and trade associations, in order to fully achieve the project objectives.
The "Dangerous Chemicals Environmental Management Registration Measures (Trial)" was issued by Ministry of Environmental Protection on July 4, 2012, which entered into effect since March 1, 2013. Away from killing marine fouling, some antifouling active substances with toxic active substances such as DDT, TBT also have strong persistence and bioaccumulation. A lot of anti-fouling paint can also be used as a pesticide active substance produced. Toxic antifouling active substances fall into the category of toxic according to the current regulations and standards, in which hazardous chemicals are divided into eight categories. The approach of risk management of hazardous chemicals was also encouraged for the chemical management. However, the current management is based on hazard assessment, risk assessment associated technical specification, test methods and quality assurance system are still in their infancy term.
In order to strengthen the institutional capacity of environmental risk assessment of antifouling active substances of the Chemical Environmental Management Department of Ministry of Environmental Protection, and mainstream the environmental risk assessment of antifouling active substance into the environmental management system of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, ensure sustainability of project results, particularly the formulation of the work plan. This work will service for the transformation of the future management of chemicals from the hazard assessment to the risk assessment based on hazard assessment, and providing effective substantive supports to improve the domestic risk assessment of chemicals management capacity.
Objectives
The overall objective is to establish or strengthen the capacity to carry out environmental risk assessment of anti-fouling paints active substances, including hazard identification, exposure assessment and risk characterization three aspects, and to support enterprises and government departments to carry out the risk management of antifouling paint products.
Activities
Environmental risk assessment capacity building is based on the computing toxicology system, standardized test procedures and qualified laboratory management, and implemented through screening, hazard identification and risk characterization of several active substances in anti-fouling paints.
1. Environmental Hazard Assessment
Procurement of hardware and software required for toxicological calculation studies, such as high-speed computers, and other related calculations toxicology software, in order to carry out persistent, bioaccumulative, ecological toxicity evaluation for anti-fouling paints active substances; establishment of physical, chemical and biological test systems, such as the typical marine test organisms acclimation and toxicity test systems, microbial metabolic analysis system, chemical analysis systems, etc.;
Establishment of hazard identification standard operating procedures and quality assurance procedures for antifouling active substances, determination of personnel responsibilities for the operators to in accordance with standard operating procedures, provision of training for institution managers, project leaders, researchers and quality assurance personnel to carry out the research plan preparation, implementation quality assurance and report preparation;
Collection of literature and evaluation on the reliability, relevance and adequacy of the existing toxicological data in three aspects, hazard characterization of several active substances in antifouling paint by combining with the existing data and QSAR/QSPR analysis results;
2. Environmental Exposure Assessment
Determination of the environmental exposure assessment factors: the number of active substances antifouling paint, the rate released into the marine environment and the residual time in the environment; factor score of exposure assessment; and classification of marine environmental exposure;
Establishment of the scenario parameters for a antifouling active substance exposure in typical ports, docks and open waters;
Prediction of sea water and sediment concentration in the typical exposure scenarios.
3. Environmental Risk Characterization Report
Determination of the environmental risk level of the active substance in antifouling paint and giving the assessment conclusions;
Writing a risk assessment report, and forming the outline of the report template.
4. Environmental Risk Assessment procedural construction
Development of the environmental risk assessment process of antifouling active substances, including the establishment of standard operating procedures, the collection and evaluation of existing data, testing and non-testing test method selection and quality assurance procedures in a risk assessment system.
Time
The implementation period of this work is expected from July to December, 2013.
Budget
Budget of this project is 420,000 US dollars (, which is equivalent to 2,575,440 yuan).
Qualifications
To meet with the requirements of "Chemicals tested laboratory management approach" and the laboratory that passed the inspections and examinations of Ministry of Environmental Protection have high priority.
To have high level performance according to the guidelines for the test of a qualified laboratory and have good research capacity and practical experiences of e practice for the practice of chemical risk assessment techniques.
The firms with interests shall contact the persons below for Request for Proposals (RFP) free of charge. Bidding documents include technical and financial proposal with your firm seal must be delivered to the address below by 17:00, July 15th, 2013 (Beijing time) and late bids will be rejected.
Contact
Qiao Yanling (Ms.), Liu Tao (Mr.)
Tel: 86-10--82268979 82268961
Fax: 86-10--82200527
Add: Foreign Economic Cooperation Office, Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, No.5 Houyingfang Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing, P. R. China
E-mail: qiao.yanling@mepfeco.org.cn; huanbaobu125@163.com
