Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to help decide whether GM crops providing starch for textile producers should be grown in the European Union. Brussels has been blocking such market approval applications on environmental grounds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ENVIRONMENTAL health managers wanting to better influence the detailed food safety guidelines of the Codex Alimentarius are being offered an e-learning course on its often arcane decision-making procedures. The Rome-based Codex advises on all manner of food safety issues, from seafood poisoning, to the leaching of packaging materials into food, and HACCP food manufacturing safety precautions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Observatory on Nanotechnologies is to be created, charged with predicting and detecting the potential environmental health problems caused by the increasing use of nanoparticles in consumer products such as tanning lotions and face creams. Coordinated by the Institute of Nanotechnology in Glasgow, Scotland, the new European body will receive Euro 4 million from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme research budget, and will involve 17 EU organisations with expertise in the field.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

TOBACCO companies aren’t usually credited with helping to save the planet. However, local hostilities tend to be easily forgotten when there’s a war going on and that’s how many eco-warriors view the global battle against climate change: old enemies can become allies, even Big Tobacco.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

LARGE mining companies take the environment seriously today, maybe rather more than in times past. They are devoting significant resources to reducing or mitigating the environmental problems caused by mining. But what about the small and artisanal mines that pepper much of the developing world?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament is pressing for an effective re-nationalisation of European Union (EU) powers to support the continued existence of an EU cotton production industry. In non-binding amendments to a proposed EU subsidy system largely disconnected from cotton production levels, MEPs have called for national funds earmarked for wide-ranging actions protecting the industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE BRITISH government and the other 26 member states of the European Union (EU) are to review their laws to ensure a wide range of misdeeds damaging the environment are listed as crimes, rather than civil misdemeanours. This follows a deal between the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament over a directive on environmental crime, which insists a number of wrongful actions be criminalised across the European Union.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

LOCAL authorities serving coastal communities will come under additional pressure to reduce pollution into the sea, following the approval of a new European Union (EU) marine environmental policy directive. It says EU member states must achieve or maintain "good environmental status" within their seas and oceans by 2020.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ONCOMING boom recycling ships should be better controlled so fewer vessels are dismantled in south Asia with little control over toxins they leach and the use of child labour. So said a European Parliament motion that warned in 2010 nearly 800 single-hull oil tankers will be scrapped, while approximately 100 warships and other European Union (EU)-flagged government vessels – most British and French – could be decommissioned by 2018.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

THE WIDESPREAD implementation of new technological developments in Malawi’s flue-cured tobacco process could enable local producers to dramatically increase their output and its quality, according to industry experts.

Results from tests run during Malawi’s latest tobacco curing season using a new method of heating have shown a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency over standard methods, and an improved quality of the end product compared to traditionally cured tobacco.…