Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has helped broker a deal with seven Balkans countries involving them reducing the environmental damage caused by their mining industries. Welcoming the agreement, UNEP highlighted the potential problems caused by mining for zinc, cadmium, copper, bauxite, silver and gold in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia & Montenegro, and (effectively independent) Kosovo.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WIDE-RANGING joint-actions involving the European Union (EU) and Russia in terms of environmental policy has been agreed in a cooperation deal forged at a summit in Moscow. Russian president Vladimir Putin, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso and current EU council president Jean-Claude Juncker, of Luxembourg, struck the deal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REPRESENTATIVE of the largest political group on the European Parliament (EP) has proposed that certain metals and all alloys be exempted from the European Union’s (EU) proposed REACH chemical control system. German MEP Hartmut Nassauer, of the EP’s European People’s Party/European Democrats group, has said that many natural substances should be exempt from REACH, if they “may be used without intermediate treatment by means of chemical substances”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s environment committee has joined the European Commission in saying that national governments, not the European Union (EU) should establish thresholds for potential pollutants in groundwater. This unusual consensus favouring decentralisation in a proposed EU environmental directive is because the chemical composition of groundwater can vary from region to region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a detailed guide for European Union (EU) businesses wanting to profit in Pakistan, giving special attention to the textile and clothing sector’s technology needs, including for dying. It stressed that demand for environmental technology will be created by new national rules insisting on the better treatment of wastewater, with the manual noting “soda ash and various chemical dying products are the main effluents needing treatment”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) controversial REACH chemical control package will not substantially affect EU downstream chemical users such as the dying industry, European Commission-ordered studies have concluded. EU industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen and environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said they showed “there is limited evidence that downstream users will be faced with a withdrawal of substances of greatest technical importance to them”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to lend up to Euro 200 million to Italy’s leading gas distributor Italgas, to help it modernise, renovate, rehabilitate and expand its pipelines throughout the country. This low interest loan would help Italgas pay for a Euro 600 million programme for 2005-8, covering all areas where it operates.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A FEASIBILITY study is to be staged by the European Union (EU) and Russia into integrating their electricity markets, as part of a wide-ranging series of joint actions on energy policy. These have been agreed in a detailed cooperation “road-map” approved at a Moscow summit by Russian president Vladimir Putin, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso and current EU council president Jean-Claude Juncker, of Luxembourg.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A HEAVYWEIGHT European international consortium will spend Euro 20 million on trying to develop commercially-viable flat plastic light sources, that could be moulded to fit spaces in homes and offices. The OLLA project (‘high brightness Organic Light-emitting diodes for information technology and Lighting Applications’) aims to build on basic research into these materials.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
A RADICAL change in the fishing year political calendar is being planned by the European Commission, which hopes to introduce a new system in 2007, Fisheries Commissioner Dr Joe Borg told Fishing News last week.

Speaking in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, he expressed impatience with the traditional timing of the fishing quota-setting schedule, which annually inflicts an unnecessary crisis management on both the sector and governments alike before every Christmas.…