Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to invest Euro 70 million in Poland’s Dolna Odra coal-fired power station, buying a minority stake from Spain’s Endesa, which is buying its three plants. Endesa will revise coal purchases – currently shipped from Upper Silesia, and spend Euro 200 million on desulphurisation and other environmental equipment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to lend Canada’s MagIndustries Corp Euro 13 million to help develop a potash plant, a magnesium smelter and rehabilitate hydro-electric power station units serving carnallite (magnesium ore) and salt deposits, at Kouilou, Pointe Noire, Congo (Brazzaville).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is injecting US$20 million in financial support into Indian steel pipe maker PSL Limited. This is designed to help the company expand production capacity to meet rising domestic and international demand for large-diameter oil, gas and water steel piping.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers and MEPs will this spring consider a major overhaul of the EU’s rules governing organic food production, which has been proposed by the European Commission. It aims to simplify standards saying when a foodstuff can be labelled organic, with EU agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel appealing for support, saying it will help "consumers to recognise organic products and understand their environmental and animal welfare benefits".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has released guidance for European Union (EU) member states setting their greenhouse gas pollution limits for 2008-2012 under the EU emissions trading regime. The advice follows teething troubles under the framing of emissions ceilings for 2005-2007, which have in any case been weakened by a successful legal challenge at the European Court of Justice by the British government to limits pushed by Brussels.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s new regulation to support organic food production – unveiled just before Christmas – isn’t quite the key to lift-off in this sector that some of us were hoping for. A cynic would say that’s because it doesn’t provide any fresh money though Brussels, farm people say that was never the plan anyway.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

CALIFORNIA has become the first US state to formally declare secondhand smoke a toxic air pollutant, aligning it with diesel exhaust, arsenic and benzene. The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously to change tobacco’s smoke status based on a report that found a sharp increased risk of breast cancer in young women exposed to passive smoking.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has upgraded advice on monitoring genetically modified foodstuffs, to ensure they do not spark unexpected health and environmental problems after authorisation. Its GMO panel says that general surveillance, designed to identify unexpected risks unanticipated in earlier studies, should always be included in environmental monitoring plans.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has embarked on a long-term environmental management scheme that will formally commit it to recycling as many materials as it can. The parliament’s president Josep Borrell and secretary general Julian Priestley have signed an ‘environmental statement’ making the EP to follow the European Union (EU)-approved Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IF there was ever a region where a mining company could build an open cast gold mine without being bothered by environmental activists, it surely has to be deepest Siberia. Lightly populated, full of scrappy forest, and often scenically uninspiring, this vast region almost seems designed for industries deemed undesirable by wildlife-loving urbanites.…