Search Results for: Environmental Health

BY KEITH NUTHALL in Paris, ALAN OSBORN in London, MARK ROWE in Singapore, ED PETERS and DON GASPER in Hong Kong, RICHARD HURST in Johannesburg, MONICA DOBIE and PHILIP FINE in Montreal, MATTHEW BRACE in Brisbane and ALEX SMAILES in Port of Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has this week (Mon22/10) launched the results of a programme of studies into the health problems caused by indoor pollutants. Releasing the reports at the opening of the 13th annual conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, at Stresa, Italy, the centre said its data revealed “insights into potential causes of acute indoor symptoms such as allergies, asthma, mucous irritation, headaches and tiredness.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has this week (Mon22/10) launched the results of a programme of studies into the health problems caused by indoor pollutants, with paints and coatings named as prime sources. Releasing the reports at the opening of the 13th annual conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, at Stresa, Italy, the centre said its data revealed “insights into potential causes of acute indoor symptoms such as allergies, asthma, mucous irritation, headaches and tiredness.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN 1995, when I visited the Laos capital Vientiane, it was a sleepy place; a quiet low rise French colonial town on the banks of the Mekong, a listless, aimless, but charming mix of Soviet-style socialist monuments, Buddhist temples and Provencal town houses.…

BY MARK ROWE
A GLASS of beer a day keeps old age at bay, apparently. A Japanese scientist has developed a beer that he claims makes you look younger by improving the texture and smoothness of your skin. While there was a passing craze in the 1970s for women to wash their hair in beer to give it more “body”, this brew, translated as “facial treatment beer”, is drunk, rather than applied.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
JAPAN has appealed against a WTO ruling that ruled its quarantine measures on imported apples from the USA could not be justified on health grounds under the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has called on European Union member countries – including Britain – to draw up a list of diseases and illnesses for which workers should be compensated if they contracted them at work.

In a formal ‘recommendation on the schedule of occupational diseases,’ Brussels calls on governments “to introduce as soon as possible” rules covering “compensation and preventative measures” for such medical conditions.…

BY PHILIP FINE

SCIENTISTS from the UK’s Institute for Animal Health have pin-pointed 60 genes associated with the deadly E. coli bacterium. The scientists said identifying the genes, which are needed by E. coli O157 to survive in calves’ intestines, should prove valuable in developing drugs or vaccines to prevent the bacterium from colonising.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investing Euro 14 million to create an EU ‘CASCADE’ network of excellence investigating the presence and effect of harmful chemicals in common foodstuffs. It will include more than 20 universities, research institutes and businesses, all coordinated by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN government has proposed a code of practice on the environmentally-friendly use of road salts which should provide good practice advice for British environmental health departments. The guidelines have been developed because of concern that melt-water from roads and storage areas have resulted in high concentrations of chloride in Canadian rivers and lakes.…