Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY MONICA DOBIE
OYSTER farmers in California are finding it increasingly difficult keeping their businesses afloat because of the ongoing threat of pollution caused by dairy farms and faulty septic tanks in the state.

Shellfish producers in Tomales Bay, in western Marin County have been forced to cease operations for days at a time this winter, because state health officials have stopped them harvesting for four-to-seven days every time more than half-an-inch of rain falls in a 24 hours period.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PETROL additives tetraethyl lead and tetramethyl lead have been provisionally added to a United Nations (UN) Rotterdam Convention Prior Informed Consent (PIC) blacklist, which allows countries to block imports of listed products on environmental health grounds. Final confirmation would be made at a convention meeting this September, in Geneva.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A COALITION of major business groups has filed an amicus brief at the United States Supreme Court, calling on it to “clarify” the USA’s 1789 Alien Tort Statute, which they claim is being abused by special interest groups.…

BY MARK ROWE
IKEA’s store in the Russian city of St. Petersburg will undergo an environmental audit to avert the threat of closure by the country’s Natural Resources Ministry. Facing the unlikely scenario of the Swedish furniture giant having to close a branch by breaking Russian environmental laws, IKEA has hired a firm to conduct the audit to comply with state regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PACKAGE of reforms to the European Union’s (EU) public procurement legislation has been agreed by a conciliation committee linking the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. A key aim has been to make the EU’s often complex public procurement rules – which aim to prevent cronyism and closed markets in government spending contracts – more transparent, efficient and comprehensible.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded project has developed a technical system to search and retrieve the increasing amount of information held in digital moving image video, still photograph or audio archives. Its coordinators say that the project will be very useful for museums and research institutes who store such material.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNESCO-led project should improve the environmental conditions of six west African nature reserves, enabling neighbouring communities to prosper from eco-tourism. They include Pendjari Biosphere Reserve, Benin; Mare aux Hippopotames Biosphere Reserve, Burkina Faso; and Comoé Biosphere Reserve, Côte d’Ivoire.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INERT mining residues should be regarded as waste under European Union (EU) and national laws controlling their disposal, unless they are immediately reused, for instance by filling disused mine shafts, the European Court of Justice has ruled. It was making an advisory judgement in a Finnish case involving mining company AvestaPolarit Chrome Oy, which wants to dispose of underground waste from a chromium mine by crushing, dressing and fine-dressing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REGIONAL far east and Pacific meeting of the Office International des Épizooties, (the world animal health organisation), has focused on calls to avoid the mass slaughter of livestock to control animal disease outbreaks. Delegates called for work on creating effective alternatives to culls that would ease environmental problems caused by carcass disposal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BEST place to break the law is where the closest policeman is 100’s of miles away. And where might that criminal utopia be? Siberia, the Sahara, the Amazon? No, it’s the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on the developed world’s doorstep, where fishing crime is becoming a real problem.…