Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER governments of the European Union now have a legal duty to hold full-scale environmental impact assessments of proposed hotel and tourism projects, when they have called them in from local authorities to make national decisions on planning applications.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DIFFERENTIAL pricing in world pharmaceutical markets has been backed by a joint workshop involving the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the Global Health Council and its national host, Norway.

A report released from the meeting has born out a general consensus reached by participants that “differential pricing could, and should, play an important role in ensuring access to existing essential drugs at affordable prices, especially in poor countries, while allowing the patent system to continue to play its role of providing incentives for research and development into new drugs.”…

Keith Nuthall
MEMBER States of the European Union have come under political pressure from Brussels to outlaw the designing and marketing of alcoholic drinks, such as alcopops, to children and adolescents, as part of a move against under-age drinking.

The EU Council of Ministers (health) has adopted a Recommendation, (formal non-binding guidelines), which calls on national governments to “ensure” that the drinks industry does not produce alcoholic beverages specifically “targeted, designed or promoted to appeal” to young people.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL Forum on Food Safety Regulators is to be staged by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation in October, reflecting concern about recent food safety incidents, such as BSE, that the FAO claims have “caused serious turmoil in the world food markets and raised concern among consumers.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER States of the European Union now have a legal duty to hold full-scale environmental impact assessments of proposed projects in a number of specific sectors, including transport and waste management, when they call in planning applications from local authorities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MARITIME workers are to be covered by EU health and safety legislation on noise, after the Council of Ministers (employment and social policy) struck a compromise deal on a new ‘health and safety: physical agents (noise)’ directive. They had been excluded from an earlier 1986 directive, which the EU is currently updating.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SOUTH Korea has announced that its half of the 2002 World Cup finals will be free from “tobacco sales, consumption, promotion and sponsorship.” The tough line on smoking in and around matches has been welcomed by both the World Health Organisation and EU health Commissioner David Byrne, who said: “This decision clearly puts tobacco products offside the World Cup.”…

KEITH NUTHALL
FISH farming companies and organisations have until September 30 to submit papers to the European Commission, if they want them to be considered as part of an ongoing review of the Common Fisheries Policy, that could create root-and-branch reforms to the way that Brussels impacts on the industry.…

BY DERIDRE MASON
MANY health and safety leaflets are going over their targets’ heads because the reading age needed to understand them is too high, delegates at the recent Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents health at work conference at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, heard.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TOP level EU delegation will fly to Tokyo next week, (July 9), in a desperate bid to salvage the Kyoto Protocol from being wrecked by the intransigence of the Bush administration in Washington. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, and ministers from Belgium and Sweden, (representing the current and next EU presidencies), planned their mission after reports emerged from a summit meeting between Bush and Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi, that Tokyo would abandon the global warming treaty, if the US refused to sign.…