Search Results for: Environmental health

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has lent Euro 190 million to Danish electricity supplier and distributor Eltra, money that will be especially targeted on boosting renewable energy production and consumption in this environment-friendly country.

Eltra is a non-profit co-operative society wholly owned by 47 municipal and consumer-owned electricity distribution companies in Denmark.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL regulatory authorities have the power to refuse to allow waste shipments to leave EU ports or cross their territories via inland waterways, whether they represent the country sending a cargo, receiving it or being used for transshipment, the European Court of Justice has ruled.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
A NEW “safe saw” hits the market in April, which could find favour with plant hire companies keen to prevent accidents involving their ‘amateur’ customers.

The brainchild of Arbortech Industries Ltd, in Western Australia, the blades of the Australian KS150 Kango Saw cut with an orbital action slicing through masonry, wood and tough composite materials but not breaking the skin if they accidentally hit flesh.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN environment ministers have reached final agreement with the European Parliament on the 6th Environmental Action Programme, setting out EU environmental objectives for the next 10 years. The compromise provides for the introduction of environment taxes and sets more ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions after 2012 than ministers had originally accepted.…

KEITH NUTHALL
HAULIERS are likely to escape the full burden of an energy taxation directive imposing minimum duty levels on petrol and diesel because of an about turn performed by European Union heads of government. A short but significant clause in the communiqué drawn up at the recent summit in Barcelona not only commits Member States to approving an energy tax law by this December, but crucially says that they should “bear in mind the needs of professionals in the road haulage industry.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is being urged, by a working party helping it write new welfare rules on laboratory animals, to take account of the effect of better conditions on experiment results. Tests have shown that subjects in comfortable surroundings are healthier than those in poor accommodation, and that these environmental factors should be considered when assessing results.…

BY PHILIP FINE

A REWRITTEN US Senate energy bill would see the use of ethanol in cars tripled and the unpopular gasoline oxygenate MTBE phased out in four years. A compromise was struck that tried to please the oil and gas, environmental, and agricultural sectors.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A HEALTHY market in the use of waste oil as a fuel to generate electricity is being promoted in the European Union through excise duty exemptions, erected in the face of official EU environmental policy, a new European Commission report says.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONCLUDING that the health of between 100,000 to 200,000 people is still at risk because of radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl disaster, a United Nations report has called for an international fight against the resulting pollution.

The joint study involving agencies such as the UN Development Programme and the World Health Organisation has claimed that 2,000 people have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer because of the explosion, and as many as 8,000 to 10,000 cases are expected to develop it over the coming years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA has attacked a ban by the EU on certain Chinese food imports on health grounds as ‘unacceptable’ and warned it could seriously affect bilateral trade. The European Commission voted to ban honey, poultry and rabbit meat, plus shrimps and prawns, following the discovery of “serious deficiencies” in China’s medical residue control system and “problems related to the use of banned substances in the veterinary field.”…