Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CONSULTATION round has been a launched by the so-called G-10 pharmaceuticals group, set up by the European Commission to consider ways of enhancing the industry’s competitiveness, whilst safeguarding patient interests.

Comments have been requested on a paper, which examines issues such as pricing, information to patients, cost-effectiveness, competitiveness, benchmarking, innovation and generics.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MOST governments are keenly concerned about the quality of food their people eat, and quite rightly so. They pass laws to ensure food purity and safety and that’s all very commendable – but it can be overdone.

Regulations can, sometimes deliberately, be drawn up so tightly that they effectively bar the sale of food produced in other countries, thus constituting an impediment to free trade.…

Keith Nuthall
A STREAMLINED system for removing faulty non-food items from retailers and service providers across the European Union, where goods have been shown to be a risk to consumers, is to be set up, following the agreement of reforms to the EU general product safety directive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ASSESSMENT of the cost of European Commission plans to introduce legislation to control the emission of poly-aromatic hydrocarbons has been released in Brussels. The study examines the benefits to human health of reducing concentrations of PAH’s in the air to meet different possible limit values, and the economic costs involved in meeting them.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE THREE important central European tobacco-growing countries of Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary will be able to claim production subsidies from Brussels when they join the European Union on the same basis as existing EU producers, European Commission officials have confirmed.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE SOUTH African drinks industry has attacked a government announcement that it intends to curb alcohol advertising on television and also order that health-warning labels be added to containers in all the country’s 11 official languages.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL plan to halt the spread of tuberculosis has been launched by a coalition of international groups, including the World Bank and the World Health Organisation; it has already appealed to national governments to pledge substantial funds.…

KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH hauliers may not in future find themselves at such a competitive disadvantage with eastern European competitors regarding the commercial transport of animals, because of a planned updating to a Council of Europe welfare convention.

Its commitments apply to countries both outside and within the European Union, where hauliers already have to comply with expensive rules on trailer standards, journey times, rest periods and the watering and feeding of livestock.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
THE TORONTO Hydro-Electric System has launched a large-scale test of vegetable-based bio-diesel fuel in its fleet of more than one hundred cars, trucks and vans as a first step to converting to 100 per cent vegetable-based fuel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is consulting the electronics industry on an ecological performance directive, which would force electrical companies to minimise the impact of their processes on the environment.

Brussels’ draft law on the impact of electrical and electronic equipment would order companies to carry out an assessment of their manufacturing systems and would also tell them to “strive to prevent pollution” in the design, distribution and operation of a product.…