Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Environment Agency has released an assessment of the performance of European governments and EU institutions regarding the reduction of air pollution. Its report reacts positively to the way that the EU has reached targets to cut emissions of acidifying substances and also pollutants that create ground-level ozone.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MASS experiment to measure European citizens’ exposure to air pollution has been launched by the European Commission, which will involve 2,000 volunteers wearing a monitoring device for 12 hours on a given day. These tests will take place in 10 large European cities, namely Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Dublin, Cracow, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Madrid, Paris and Rome.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANOTHER EU body promoting workplace standards has been proposed. An Advisory Committee for Safety, Hygiene and Health Protection at Work should be established, said the European Commission. Its formal proposal says that it should advise Brussels on health and safety legislation and programmes, as well as publicising good practice with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW DNA test has been developed which can detect tuberculosis in two to three hours; Professor Mike Barer from Leicester University used the results from the decoding of the mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium genome to look for markers that could be used to detect the germ.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FIRST meeting of the management board of the European Food Safety Authority has elected Britain’s Chair of the National Consumer Council, Deridre Hutton, as a vice-chair and appointed as chairman Codex Alimentarius vice-chair Dr Stuart Slorach, also Deputy Director of the Swedish National Food Administration.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DEVELOPMENT of a North Pole ozone layer hole is unlikely, according to a report from the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Programme. It claims that the accumulation of ozone destroying substances in the upper atmosphere is near its peak and that the size of the Antarctic hole seems to be stablilising, probably thanks to the Montreal Protocol, which limited the release of such chemicals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed the creation of a central European Union aid fund commanding between Euro 500,000 and Euro 1 billion, which could be raided by Member States and eastern European countries wanting to join the EU that fall victim to natural disasters.…

BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUND-breaking environmental initiative is being developed in Greece involving a desalination plant being powered wholly by the heat of the earth’s upper crust.

The plant’s electricity turbines will be driven by geothermal fluids pumped from deep underground fissures under the island, whose temperatures can reach 100°C.…

BY MARK ROWE
ENVIRONMENTAL organisations together with a local authority have issued a lawsuit against the American government for its alleged contribution to global warming. The suit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco claims that two American export credit agencies illegally provided US$32 billion in financing for oil fields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants over the past 10 years without assessing their contribution to global warming.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Intellectual Property Organisation is moving ahead with its project to build a new administrative building at its Geneva headquarters, with Stuttgart architects Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner working to a SFr 157.5 million budget.

They have drawn up plans for a building with a minimum of 560 working places and 280 underground parking spaces.…