Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESTRICTIONS on the marketing and use of nonylphenol and nonylphenolethoxylates have been formally approved by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers for industry. It accepted amendments previously passed to this directive by the European Parliament and so the legislation passed without having to receive a second reading by MEPs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOOMY report from a consortium of high ranking European research teams has predicted that the world’s efforts to prevent greenhouse gas emissions are doomed to failure, even while the European Commission strives to force EU Member States to abide by their Kyoto Protocol commitments.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government has announced increased funding to help its state food laboratories deal with possible terrorist attacks directly or indirectly involving food poisoning. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are expanding the National Laboratory Response Network and the Food Emergency Response Network.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament is preparing to strengthen the proposed European Union (EU) directive on environmental liability, which is designed to ensure that polluters pay for damage that they cause through intent or negligence.

MEP’s on the parliament’s legal affairs and internal market committee are supporting amendments that would extend the scope of this legislation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN conservation group has teamed up with the European Space Agency to collate satellite data of water pollution, in a bid to influence national government policies on land use and urbanisation. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Italia is concerned about environmental damage being caused at overdeveloped “hot spots,” especially on the coast.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GERMANY has been preventing a collective acceptance by the 15 EU countries on the United Nations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As in the negotiations at the World Health Organisation over the convention, at EU Council of Ministers meetings Germany has stood out, (mirroring the US position), against key aspects of the text, notably the ban on tobacco advertising.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SENIOR European Commission official has hit back at calls by environmental groups that the ongoing review of the European Union’s treaties should lead to the abolition of special commitments supporting nuclear power.

Instead, said François Lamoureux, Commission director-general for energy and transport, the 1957 Euratom treaty’s main provisions should be preserved in any reforms proposed this summer by the European Convention, the review body tasked with renewing the EU’s administrative structure.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WHAT a complex and mysterious thing wheat is! Scientists tell us that modern wheat is a hexaploid, which means that the long-distant ancestors of wheat “hybridised in a way that combined three copies of the original genome to produce a genome with over 150,000 genes.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SENIOR European Commission official has attacked calls by environmental groups that the ongoing review of EU treaties should abolish Euratom. François Lamoureux, Commission energy and transport director general said its main provisions should be preserved in reforms proposed this summer by the European Convention, the body tasked with renewing the EU’s administrative structure.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Environment Agency has warned that Europe’s water resources are being put under threat by unsustainable economic practices, and although “only a few” European citizens suffer from “devastating shortages,” drinking water quality is a concern throughout Europe.…