Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE FORMAL agreement within a conciliation committee by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers and the European Parliament of a new mining waste directive has been welcomed by EU environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. He said: "This is a very good result and will…tackle environmental and human health impacts throughout the life-cycle of mining waste facilities".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s 2004-10 SCALE action plan for improving the environmental health of the European Union (EU) has been attacked at the European Parliament for being too weak. Parliament’s environment committee overwhelmingly backed a report by Belgian liberal Frédérique Ries saying the plan does “not go nearly far enough”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
BACTERIA have never had it so good in Canada. Demonized worldwide by environmental health officers, bacteria are being feted and are currently living large in Ontario, being injected into tips to feast on sludge. Professor Elizabeth Edwards, a scientist from the University of Toronto has discovered a way to farm naturally occurring bacteria, introducing them into toxic landfills, where they neutralise tough chlorine-based pollutants.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

EUROPE’S clothing and textile industries have reported mixed feelings about the proposed agreement on the European Union’s (EU) REACH chemical control policy, which won agreement in principle from the EU Council of Ministers for competitiveness ministers this week (December 13).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$2.5 million to Kazakhstan’s Bericap Kazakhstan LLC to construct a new factory making plastic food container tops (or closures) for local and other central Asian markets. Part of the German plastic container company, the Bericap Holding Group, the Kazakhstan business plans to build purpose-built production facilities, allowing it to relocate its operations, optimising costs; providing space for future expansion; and improving environmental plus health and safety management.…

BY TAMARA VANTROYEN, in Hong Kong

CHINA looks to be a likely candidate for the first country in the world to approve genetically modified rice, despite the fact that the State Agricultural GM Crop Biosafety Committee, a technical body which evaluates GM rice for research, did not approve the idea at its three-day meeting in Beijing, December 10-12, 2005.…

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. Mining companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and the agency has issued 58 guarantees for the sector since it was formed in 1988.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released formal requests to World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to liberalise their services sectors, including insurance, as part of the Doha Development Round. Financial services are explicitly mentioned in these bilateral demands, which have been addressed directly to all 103 WTO member governments, however the Commission is refusing to reveal full details.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN has been given a generally positive report on its environmental performance by a detailed and long-term European Environment Agency (EEA) report. Overall, the EEA said that the UK was "fortunate to have implemented a series of structural economic changes in the recent past that have brought environmental improvements".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project is seeking to improve knowledge of what causes food allergies, a significant problem for the seafood sector. The EuroPrevall project will try to identify risk factors (environmental, microbial, genetic) that cause allergic reactions, helping pinpoint the circumstances sparking these problems.…