A Sino-Canadian laboratory devoted to dioxin research has gone into operation in east China's Zhejiang Province to support China's efforts to limit the environmentally destructive chemical.

The laboratory, located in the provincial capital Hangzhou, cost 7.63 million yuan (about US$922,000). It is jointly sponsored by China's Zhejiang Province and Canada's Alberta Province, said Yang Jing, deputy director of Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Health.

The Canadian side has provided financial and technological support as well as personnel training. So far it has trained four scientists from the Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees the lab.

The lab provides dioxin analysis and testing services involvingchemical products, environmental samples, foodstuffs and fodder. It has also begun analysis of dioxin residue in fresh-water fish.

China and 89 other countries signed and adopted the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in May 2002, pledging to ban and control the use of POPs. The cancer-causing dioxin is one of the 12 key POPs listed in the convention.

(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2005)