Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIGNIFICANT problems have been detected by a European Commission study into the implementation of the European Union’s integrated pollution prevention and control directive in seven EU Member States, with Britain being the only country so far found complying.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL institution best known for promoting free market solutions for the world’s economic ills has issued a surprising call for governments to promote environmental good practice by relying more on compulsory regulation and less on voluntary guidance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the World Health Organisation securing approval for its long debated Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, attention is now turning to ratifications by member countries: 40 are needed for it to come into force, Last minute concessions were made at the WHO to bring dissenters such as Germany and the United States on board, who had objected to the convention’s insistence on signatory governments banning tobacco advertising; both countries said this broke constitutional guarantees of free speech.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation of the World Bank is lending US$17.5 million in INDRupees to Indian textile company Alok Industries Ltd, allowing the Mumbai (Bombay)-based company to expand and modernise its facilities and meet growing demand from domestic and international customers.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A KYOTO Protocol secretariat report has warned the industrialised world’s greenhouse gas emissions will probably grow this decade, having stabilised during the 1990’s. Based on government projections, the paper claims combined emissions of Europe, Japan, the US and other highly industrialised countries could grow by eight per cent from 2000 to 2010, (17 per cent over 1990 levels), despite measures already in place to limit them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Free Trade Area (EFTA) Court has thrown out a bid by two environmental groups to stop the Norwegian government offering tax privileges to natural gas exploration companies working in the inhospitable Snøhvit field, off the far north coast of Norway.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INNOVATION from European Union-funded research has continued to offer improvements to the way that EU water utilities work. For instance, the European Commission-funded MicroChem initiative has developed miniaturised laboratory-on-a-chip systems suitable for rapid field testing of water streams. They examine water in tiny pictolitre quantities, flowing through microbore channels produced by photolithographic etching.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL imaging from the European Space Agency’s ERS-2 satellite helped Swedish, German and Danish oil containment ships scoop up the bulk of an oil slick released from a sunken Chinese freighter that threatened the southern coast of Sweden this month.(June)…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HEADS of government at the recent G8 summit in France have committed their countries to reducing the environmental threat posed by oil tankers. A communiqué committed their governments to accelerate the introduction of a safety code for flag states, establish mandatory pilotage in narrow, restricted or congested waters, improve inspections and other measures.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NOBODY likes nuclear waste but nobody has yet thought up a universally-acceptable way of disposing of it. This is as true in Europe as anywhere else. It may be fair to say, however, that some European countries have gone further than the rest of the world in drawing conclusions about the future of nuclear energy as a result of the problems caused by radioactive waste.…