Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

BELGIUM should better prepare for its goal of phasing out nuclear power between 2015 and 2025, an International Energy Agency (IEA) assessment has concluded. Given that nuclear energy currently supplies about 55% of Belgian electricity, "filling the resulting gap will require other supply sources, such as electricity imports, new generation capacity or energy savings," noted the IEA.…

STORIES BY MONICA DOBIE

A US federal appeals court has overturned an emissions regulation issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that opponents claimed would exempt most power plant equipment changes from environmental reviews, even those generating more pollution. The court said the rule conflicted with the USA Clean Air Act.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Non-ferrous metal miners and processors use MIGA to cover risks that are too tough for the private insurance industry.…

BY JANE MOIR, in Hong Kong

CONSTRUCTION is on the up, people are eagerly buying homes, cars are being churned out at a rapid pace and the 2008 Beijing Olympics are just around the corner. The demand for paint and coatings in China should never have been better.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Oil and gas companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and at December 2005, MIGA had supported 13 oil and gas projects, with guarantees totalling US$707 million, with a standard leverage of five-to-one, so investments covered are actually five times larger.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London

EUROPEAN and US regulatory bodies have agreed to co-operate to develop common testing and engineering standards for mobile air conditioning systems such as those used in automobiles. Because some of the gases used in these systems, such as HFC 134a, are far more lethal to the environment than carbon dioxide, the European Union (EU) has agreed to start phasing them out in 2011 and stop using them in new autos from 2017.…

BY MARK ROWE

FOR something so small, nanotechnology is set to play a big role in the work of the environmental health officer. As it stretches across the entire field of science, from medicine and physics to engineering and chemistry, the areas that potentially encroach upon the work of the EH officer are considerable – not least because nanotechnology’s emerging uses are increasingly raising concern that it may harm workers, consumers or the environment and,

According to Dr Sally Tinkle of the US-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the key areas at issue – industrial, consumer and medical applications – each have their own concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AIR fresheners may pose unknown health risks to consumers and their emissions should be subject to further research, a key European Union (EU) expert group has recommended. The ‘scientific committee on health and environmental risks’ has warned that "emissions from air fresheners contain many more compounds than those assessed" by an important study by the Bureau Européen des Consommateurs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A SHARP decline observed in European butterfly populations by an international study has raised parallel concerns about worsening environmental conditions in general. The report published in the Journal of Insect Conservation says that butterflies "are very good candidates to build biodiversity indicators".…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

NON-metallic minerals, long considered the poor relations in the extended family of industrial minerals, are suddenly popular again.

They have found favour once more because of their molecular structures and their usefulness in the rapidly advancing world of nanotechnology.…