The country is expected to spend billions in the next decade to curb the problem of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), Xinhua quoted an environment official as saying yesterday in Beijing.

Zhuang Guotai, deputy director of the Stockholm Convention Implementation Office under the State Environment Protection Administration, said that in order to fulfil the already-drafted implementation plan, the country will have to spend at least 34 billion yuan (US$4.25 billion) within the next decade.

Zhuang said the number was just a "rough" figure and does not include the money needed to treat land that has been polluted by POPs.

POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods.

They are widely distributed geographically and can accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms and are toxic to humans and wildlife, said Tang Xiaoyan, director of the Environmental Science Centre of the Peking University.

"The reduction of a man's sperm count and the feminization of men are believed to be highly linked to POPs," she said.    

The Stockholm Convention is an international agreement on POPs initiated in 2001. In implementing the Convention, governments will take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment.

According to the plan, by 2010, the country will have to ban the production and use of chlordane, mirex and DDT, three kinds of pesticides that are listed among the 12 kinds of POPs that need to be reduced in the Convention.

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