Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has drawn up plans to lend First Quantum Minerals Ltd up to Euro 14 million to expand the Bwana Mkubwa hydrometallurgical copper production facility in Ndola, in the Zambian copper-belt.

Its aim is to boost its copper production from 10,000 tonnes per annum to 30,000 tonnes per annum, extending the useful life of the plant by at least six years.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADIAN consultancies Wardrop Engineering and Micon International are to offer joint advice on mining and metallurgical projects, from initial resource estimation, feasibility studies and operational analysis, to site closure. The two companies have decided they can work well together as their areas of expertise dovetail, rather than duplicate each other’s.…

Keith Nuthall
FINAL agreement has been secured on the shape of an updated European Union directive on employees’ safety from exposure to mechanical vibrations, with the European Parliament cutting the latest deadline companies have to introduce technical changes reducing exposure from 2011 to 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission-funded report has claimed that technological advances have made it feasible to roll-out the next phase of offshore wind turbines, which could generate 100 MW, dwarfing the capacity of the current 80 MW models.

The Concerted Action on Offshore Wind Energy in Europe (CA-OWEE) project has concluded that “the physical and environmental challenges are within the grasp of the offshore and wind energy industries,” although there are still problems posed by “market uncertainties.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ARCANE procedures of the world’s food standards body the Codex Alimentarius could be made simpler and more transparent, because of the launch joint review of its work by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE CRUCIAL question of whether the European Commission’s new proposed directive on tobacco advertising will stand up legally is still unclear after a hearing on the subject in the European Parliament. Last year the measure was rejected on the grounds that it attempted to set health policy, an area where the EU has no constitutional role.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN ENVIRONMENTAL group is taking the world’s largest poultry company to court for allegedly failing to take care of noxious releases on one of their contracted farms. The Sierra Club alleges that the US’s Kentucky-based Tyson Foods failed to report releases of ammonia on four large ‘chicken houses.’…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency is offering to check how countries are implementing environmental treaties such as monitoring the growth of forests under the Kyoto Protocol or their rate of shrinkage under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Its Treaty Enforcement Services using Earth Observation can use ESA satellites to check the extent of national woodland stocks.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is piling political pressure onto industries, especially fossil fuel electricity generators, which pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to force them to clean up their processes, adding costs to their bottom line.

In a move that will only serve to make CHP and renewable plants more competitive by comparison, the Commission is preparing a raft of legal cases against eight European Union Member States, to force them to monitor and restrict their production of key greenhouse pollutants.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE USA’S Environmental Protection Agency is promoting the production of chemical gases from waste materials by reclassifying these currently "hazardous" toxins and allowing them to be used in gasification programmes, a process that puts materials under high temperatures to convert them into a so-called syngas.…