Search Results for: Environmental Health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE HIGH risk of nurses worldwide becoming victims of violence has sparked four international organisations into drawing up guidelines advising managers on how to reduce the exposure of their staff to physical attack or threats.

These draft Framework Guidelines for addressing Workplace Violence in the Health Sector are being produced by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), Public Services International (PSI) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the bill for cleaning up after the Prestige disaster grows larger and larger, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has committed itself to redoubling efforts to raise the standard of shipping amongst its developed country members.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US National Academy of Sciences says that no significant evidence yet exists that eating products from cloned livestock causes harm. A committee – which included microbiologists, geneticists and animal scientists – said most of the serious risks are not human health hazards linked to food but from the potential impact of cloned animals on the environment that they interact with.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
MOST businesses install computer software because it makes their operation more efficient and so helps them to keep abreast of, or outdo, the competition. However, the growth in national and international regulations affecting the drinks industry has opened up a lucrative business opportunity for companies producing industry-specific computer software.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AS with any organisation that represents members with a common basic purpose but often with radically different approaches towards achieving it, CANSO has had some difficulty in defining its voice in the community in which it operates. Indeed it is a fairly new organisation, formally set up in 1998, and composed of leading civil air navigation service operators who until then had been used to speaking their own minds without any need to temper their opinions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONSERVATIONISTS have welcomed a controversial United Nations (UN) report identifying wealthy western companies allegedly involved in wartime projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) they say may endanger rare great apes.

It says Barclays Bank, diamonds giant De Beers, British mining corporation Anglo American, Belgian bankers Fortis, South African miners Iscor, and the United Arab Emirates’ Standard Chartered Bank and 79 other companies have broken OECD multinational good behaviour guidelines by their association with mining, logging or road building in the Congo.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
*A supermarket boom in sub-Saharan Africa is raising food production and distribution standards, which many small farmers cannot meet, said the UN’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It called for the funding of cooperatives, micro-loans and training, especially in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland.…

BY PHILIP FINE

HEINZ did something this year that its rival large USA-based food producers seem to be shying away from. They put their own name on an organic product.

One would think other US companies would have, by now, employed the same strategy as Heinz: use organic-friendly Europe as a test-market for an eventual US launch of an organic product, but the idea seems to be slow in catching on.…

BY PHILIP FINE

WHILE it may seem that big brand names have been shut out of American confectionary shelves of health stores, in reality several multinational food giants have been very actively pursuing the organic foods sector, albeit through the back door.…

Keith Nuthall
SHIP’S masters are always alert to the threat posed by stowaways, but not necessarily when those uninvited passengers have scales, fins and gills. Both the International Maritime Organisation and the European Union are working to tighten global environmental regulations that prevent the accidental transportation of such illegal aliens in ballast water.…