LAUSR

The unsustainable life cycle management of pesticides in the last 70 years has created large pesticide stockpiles. The two major working areas of the International HCH & Pesticides Association (IHPA; www.ihpa.info) partly address these legacies: (1) assess and support the management of the world’s single largest persistent organic pollutants (POPs) stockpile: the 4 to 7 million tonnes (t) of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) wastes dumped globally from lindane production (Vijgen et al. 2011; Vijgen et al. 2013) and (2) support the management of the ~ 240,000 t of obsolete pesticides legacy in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) countries, where these pesticides are stored without adequate safety control, posing huge risks to the environment and human health (Vijgen et al. 2013). As a major part of its approach, the IHPA organizes of the biannual BInternational HCH and Pesticides Forum^ bringing together researchers, policymakers, government institutions, industry, civil society, and donors from different parts of the world for discussion on issues related to pesticide/POPs pollution and related solutions. This special issue of Environmental Science Pollution Research includes selected papers from the 13th HCH and Pesticides Forum held in Zaragoza, Spain, as well as selected contemporary case studies on POPs. The 13th Forum was organized in Zaragoza to draw international attention to the enormous environmental and financial problems in the region of Aragon (Spain) due to the former production of Lindane by Inquinosa and the unregulated dumping of more than 100,000 t of HCH-waste around Sabiñánigo and the Gállego River (Fernandez et al. 2013; De La Torre et al. 2018). From 2014 to 2016, a total of 65,000 t of HCH solid waste and 342,000 t of polluted soil were transferred to a new sanitary landfill with isolating measures beyond the Spanish legal requirements (De La Torre et al. 2018). The Forum agenda included disseminating the Aragon authorities’ experiences with addressing this problem and transferring this knowledge to the EECCA countries and other interested countries with similar HCH-waste problems (Vijgen et al. 2011; IHPA 2015a, b). Assessing the pollution situation, the relevance to human exposure, and possible improvements using available management and scientific measures remains a key challenge for developing and transition economies. In this special issue, three contributions (Toichuev et al. 2017a,b; Doolotkeldieva et al. 2017) document in detail the situation of POPs pesticide legacy in the Kyrgyz Republic. Toichuev (academy of science), together with the NGO Green Cross and TAUW company, describes the preliminary assessment and activities to secure the largest and most hazardous POPs pesticides dumping sites in Kyrgyzstan, where cattle died and the local population has high pesticide levels in blood, breastmilk, and placenta (Toichuev et al. 2017a). This study also reports on practical risk reduction measures carried out within a UN project and provides further recommendations on monitoring and assessment, including the suggestion to consider the findings of the study in the National Implementation Plan of Kyrgyzstan (Toichuev et al. 2017a). Toichuev and colleagues from the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic analyzed organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in 241 placentas from cotton-growing regions, 121 placentas from an urban area (city of Osh), and 146 placentas from unpolluted mountain regions of Kyrgyzstan. The relative risk of health problems in both, mothers and newborns increased significantly, in a concentrationdependent manner, with increasing levels of total OCPs Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues