Good practice:

HCH air monitoring in Aragon sites

A factory was producing lindane in Aragon from 1975 to 1989. An estimate of more than 150,000 tons of solid waste with high content of HCH and other organochlorine compounds was produced, and dumped, together with liquid wastes in two landfills, 500m and 2km distance from the closest municipality. Since 1994, the Government of Aragon implements measures for the control, containment and remediation of the contamination, as well as for the environmental monitoring.
As part of the environmental monitoring, the Government of Aragon manages a monitoring network of the air quality of the HCH contaminated sites and their surroundings.
This network is composed by 11 sampling points equipped with passive air samplers, large volume collectors and sedimentable particle samplers that monitor HCH in a permanent basis.
The air monitoring shows that since the beginning of the monitoring in 2014, HCH air levels in the inhabited areas and in the contaminated sites surroundings accomplish the regulatory limits. The running of the air monitoring network constitutes a guarantee for citizens on the protection of human and environmental health.
The main stakeholders of the practice are therefore inhabitants of the municipalities located close to the old HCH landfills.

Equipment: passive air samplers, large volume collectors, sedimentable particle samplers
Lab consumables
Staff: 1 lab technician+ 1 field technician+ 1 expert (data analysis)
Transport
Estimate for 10 sample points: 150.000 €/year (95.000 lab test+ 30.000 field campaings+ 25.000 data analysis)

The HCH air monitoring network in Aragon is the only one of its characteristics in Spain.
It contributes to the Application of the National Plan for the Application of the Stockholm Convention and Regulation 850/2004 on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The HCH air monitoring network could be applicable to any contaminated site where lindane was produced or stored.
There are 25 lindane contaminated megasites in 14 European countries, according to the PETI committee "Lindane in EU" and more than 40 megasites based in recent information coming from the EU project HCHinEU. All the regions and countries where these sites are located could benefit from this Good Practice.