Moms and POPs Project (MaPP) is bringing together women’s health advocacy groups, scientists, academicians, and community groups to discuss how biomonitoring can be done in ways that engage community groups in  project design and implementation, that  fully support breastfeeding and that help us  learn more about how biomonitoring can be implemented with sensitivity, respect for traditions and the needs of women who participate in biomonitoring projects. We are focusing especially on best practices for communication of breastmilk biomonitoring results to project individuals and to the general public in ways that acknowledge the complexity of the message, but that also educate about the need and means to rid all our bodies of toxic chemicals.

MaPP has been initiated in response to a World Health Organization breastmilk monitoring project. The WHO project is part of the effectiveness evaluation program for the UN Stockholm Convention, a global treaty that bans twelve of the worst POPs chemicals. This new United Nations- sponsored project has invited nearly thirty countries in the Global South to participate in a monitoring project that will test breastmilk for the presence of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The resulting information from the biomonitoring projects will be used to assess the effectiveness of the Stockholm Convention.