Search Results for: Environmental health

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 by 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 theh economic costs involved in meeting them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has launched an urgent appeal for US$2.9 million, to fund a mass immunisation campaign fighting a potentially disastrous yellow fever outbreak in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast. The WHO is preparing to deliver vaccine from an international stockpile as soon as possible, but will need to secure more medicines.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Intellectual Property Organisation, (WIPO), has released a plan for the fighting of abusive registration of Internet sites involving International Non-proprietary Names, (INN’s), the generic, unique and distinctive names of pharmaceutical substances, selected by the World Health Organisation, (WHO).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL agreement on the creation of a new European Aviation Safety Agency has been forged in Brussels, with the approval by both the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers that such a body should be set up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN the years of the Cultural Revolution, when the bamboo curtain separated the world’s most populous country from the rest of the globe, the idea of sending bulk agricultural exports to China would have seemed laughable. Even today, Chinese export markets buy up a fraction of British farming produce, but in the future, this could change.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has recommended the composition of a influenza vaccine for the 2002 southern hemisphere flu season. It has concluded that the medicine should include an A/Moscow/10/99(H3N2)-like virus, an A/New Caledonia/20/99(H1N1)-like virus and a B/Sichuan/379/99-like virus.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has decided to come out fighting in its row with Member States over the liberalisation of energy markets. Calling on EU Ministers and the European Parliament to “rapidly adopt” its March 2001 proposals to completely liberalise gas and electricity markets by 2005, the Commission threatened to use exceptional powers granted to it under EU treaties to pass directives and decisions on market fairness, bypassing opposition from national governments and MEPs.…

KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBERS of European national parliaments and the European Parliament itself have called on the EU and its Member States to subsidise renewable energy producers, so that they can become competitive in the EU energy market.

Meeting at an inter-parliamentary meeting in Gotland, Sweden, organised by the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources, (EUFORES), and the Swedish Bioenergy Association, (SVEBIO), the parliamentarians agreed that renewable energies “can and should provide a significant share of the total energy supply in Europe, but their potential is far from being realised.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRACTICAL advice on how local authorities can cope with the growing threats posed by floods and droughts have been included in a new report from the European Environment Agency, which claims that flooding is “the most common and most costly type of natural disaster in Europe.”…

BY KATE REW
ENVIRONMENTAL group Friends of the Earth has criticised legislation being considered last week before the US House of Representatives, claiming that they would authorise more than US$33 billion over ten years in new and expanded subsidies for the oil, coal, gas and nuclear power industries.…