Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has complied with a ruling from the European Ombudsman, who backed the right of Friends of the Earth to read environmental studies regarding the compliance of the UK and Gibraltar with directives on waste, hazardous waste and habitats.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE FIRST session of the United Nations’ Forum on Forests has begun work at UN headquarters in New York, with a brief to identify a five-year agenda of discussions and develop the means of implementing any international agreements on forests that might be struck by the forum in future.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, Canada
THE ROYAL Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia are investigating the use of concrete tree spikes drilled into trees by environmental extremists to splinter the metal blade of a logger’s chainsaw or break huge saws used in mills, wrecking machinery and sending broken metal and concrete shrapnel in every direction.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS in developing countries are to be offered US$ 17 million in grants for work on tobacco control policies, via a new programme co-sponsored by the US National Institutes for Health and the World Health Organisation. Their International Tobacco Health Research and Capacity Building Programme will, over the next five years, support research on tobacco consumption and related health risks in developing countries and fund studies about how tobacco use impacts on low and middle-income countries..…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL agreement has been forged at the European Union’s Council of Ministers for employment and social policy on a new ‘health and safety: physical agents (noise)’ directive, that should introduce pan-EU workplace exposure limits.

Ministers managed to strike a compromise, ironing out some long standing disagreements on the upper limit value for noise exposure and whether there should be special rules for the maritime and air transport sectors, as requested by Greece, Italy and the UK governments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH schools have featured in an international study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which highlighted good practice examples of how sensitive building design can help education.

The report, Designs for Learning: 55 Exemplary Educational Facilities, looked at how technological change in learning techniques – such as the Internet – and in environmental requirements – such as energy efficiency – has been incorporated in new schools, universities and colleges.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A DUTCH government aid scheme to help reduce CO2 emissions in inland waterway, road and rail transport in the Netherlands has been approved by the European Commission.

The budget for the scheme, which is part of the Dutch effort to meet its EU objectives under the Kyoto protocol, is put at Euro 36 million and will run until the end of 2007.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL statistics are usually harbingers of bad news, so it is refreshing to hear of some positive numbers in the field via the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat’s recent report ‘gaining better knowledge of the pressures on our environment.’…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE TARGET of ensuring that 22 per cent of electricity generated within the European Union comes from renewable sources by the year 2010, has been written into the proposed European Environment Action Programme, by both the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers.…

KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER States of the European Union have been placed under increasing political and legal pressure from both the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to improve the environmental quality of their water supplies.

France, for instance, has lost a long-running case at the ECJ, over its failure to ensure the availability of sufficiently clean drinking water in Brittany.…