Introduction

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) entered into force on the May 17, 2004, and has currently 142 signatory parties (February 28, 2007). The main objective of the Stockholm Convention (SC) is to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants by reducing or eliminating their releases into the environment.

Parties to the Stockholm Convention are required to develop National Implementation Plans to demonstrate their implementation of the Convention obligations including arrangements necessary for effectiveness evaluation of adopted measures.

Data on the POP contamination of ambient air in the Central and Eastern European Region is insufficient, and the lack of regular monitoring is a priority problem. Based on the evaluation of the technical and financial capabilities of available local laboratories it has been concluded that they are capable of providing OCP and PCB analyses of environmental and food samples. These laboratories, however, require both financial and human resources to obtain or replace equipment, and to attract and train the skilled personnel. It cannot be done without the methodological coordination of the individual monitoring programs to achieve higher effectiveness of data collection. Answering those needs (providing the passive air samplers as reasonably cheap tools for the ambient air monitoring, coordination of the local institutions in their efforts, and transferring know-how) was a main reason for the initiation of the MONET_CEECs Project and establishment of the partner network.