Austria would be implementing a new regulation in October 2001, requiring importers of electricity to declare the proportions of the electricity from clean or renewable sources and from dirty sources such as coal. Austria started its energy market in 1999 and would be moving to a fully deregulated market in October 2000. The move reflects the desire by European Union members to ensure that cheaper energy imports, such as those supplied by eastern European countries, adhere to the union's stringent environmental and safety regulations. The European Commission plans to present proposals later in 2001 that requires oil refineries to mix a percentage of bio-fuel with petrol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The plans are currently being drawn up by the European Union (EU) Energy Commission and the final "bio" percentage has not been finalised.

The United States government would be passing a new legislation requiring public schools nationwide to notify parents about the use of pesticides in schools. The legislation would prohibit the use of pesticides in an occupied area of a school and the use of certain pesticides in any area that would be used within 24 hours. It would require each state to develop a school pest-management plan that considers alternatives to the toxic sprays. The legislation would also require the following measures to be implemented:

• School districts to notify teachers, staff, parents and guardians three times a year about pesticides use;
• Establish a registry so that parents and school staff can sign up to receive notification 24 hours before a pesticide application;
• Give parents and school staff access to health information about all pesticides used in their schools; and
• Warning signs to be posted 24 hours before and after application of pesticides.

Researchers from the Penn State University have shown in laboratory experiments that some open oil spills previously thought to be incombustible because of the formation of emulsions when mixed with seawater could be cleaned up via burning. Open oil spill is an oil spill on the ocean contained by booms or a spill surrounded by ice.

In the laboratory experiments, the researchers showed that diesel fuel emulsions containing up to 80 percent water and crude oil emulsions containing up to 35 percent water could be ignited using an external radiant heat source. In addition, the researchers also developed simple charts for use as a quick reference to determine the minimum heat source needed to facilitate burning.

One of the researchers said that in an actual open water situations, the external heat flux could come from an adjacent deliberately set fire which would provide the needed minimum heat flux for the surrounding emulsion to ignite and burn. As the emulsion ignites, the size of the fire would grow, providing an even larger heat flux to the unburned emulsion, causing it to ignite in a chain reaction that would continue until all of the emulsion is burned and the spill is removed. According to the researchers, oil combustion can be a highly effective clean up measure. The burning is very rapid and any resulting ecological damage is less severe compared to conventional oil removal methods. However, an open water demonstration still needs to be done to show proof of the concept. The Swiss government has adopted a new regulation limiting levels of carcinogenic substances in treated wood products including garden fencing. The new regulation which takes effect from 1 Oct 2001, imposed a maximum content of benzopyrene at 50 parts per million (ppm) and soluble phenols at 3% by weight in treated wood products. Creosote oil which contains both substances, was thus banned from use as a wood protector.

A US company designed a ceramic-lined furnace that could melt the sediments from the Fox River which was contaminated by PCBs into glass aggregates.

The sediments dredged from the river would first be treated with lime and then put through a dryer to remove 90 percent of the water. The sediments would then be loaded into a hopper and screw-fed into the furnace. Inside the furnace, a series of nozzles would inject oxygen and natural gas into the air space above the sediments, creating a bright layer of flame and burning at 2,900ºF. The heat tears the man-made molecules apart and destroys the PCBs.

A study conducted by the researchers from the Michigan State University showed that growth was significantly reduced among girls in Germany who were exposed to high levels of an environmental contaminant known as dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethene (DDE). DDE is a metabolite of DDT, a pesticide that was banned in 1970s.

The researchers looked at the health records of 343 German children and ascertained heights from birth until the age of 8 years old. They found that girls who were exposed to higher levels of DDE were about an inch shorter than those who were exposed to lower levels and there was no significant difference among the boys.

One of the researchers said there were several theories as to why DDE affected girls more than boys. One theory was that DDE acts as an endocrine disrupter whereas another proposed that DDE could have affected the thyroid hormone. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has promoted the potential use of dimethyl-ether (DME) as the future clean fuel source at a one-day workshop attended by leading experts from oil and energy companies, vehicle and fuel injection system manufacturers and scientists.

DME is currently produced for use as a propellant in aerosol spray cans. DME is a clean and safe fuel that can be made from natural gas, coal or biomass. The workshop thus sees the possible potential applications for the fuel inwhich include power generation, domestic heatingfuels, diesel engines and in fuel cells.An new Earth- orbiting monitor mounted on a satellite is providing the most complete view assembled to date of the world's air pollution to date as its churns through the atmosphere, crossing continents and oceans.

Launched in December 1999, MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) tracks the air pollutant carbon monoxide from aboard the Terra satellite as it circles the Earth from pole to pole 16 times a day. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder are blending the new data with output from a computer model of Earth's atmosphere to develop the world's first global maps of long termlong-term lower atmosphere pollution.

Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark conducted a study to look at how ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were being released into the atmosphere when foam insulation used in older refrigerators were shredded. They found that shredding one discarded refrigerator could quickly release more than 100 grams of CFC-11 into the environment and the smaller the size of the shredded foam, the faster was the release of CFCs.

In the United States, more than eight million old refrigerators and freezers were shredded at the landfill annually to recover the scrap metal. The researchers estimated that the shredding of these refrigerators and freezers could result in the release of a total of nearly 4,000 tons of CFCs over the next 300 years.

Under this strategy, member states will need to develop national sustainability plans, major EU policy proposals will include sustainability impact assessments, EU institutions will improve internal policy coordination between different sectors and the progress will be reviewed annually.

A team of Penn State meteorologists found that the reduction of primary air pollutants does not always reduce the amount of air pollution. For example, when a city wants to control the amount of sulphates in the air, it seems prudent to limit the emissions of sulphur dioxide. However, the meteorologists found that this direct approach might not work depending on the location.

The meteorologists conducted a study to find out how controlling the chemicals that oxidise sulphur dioxide would affect the formation of sulphate particles. They looked at a variety of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds that figured into the formation of sulphate particles. The study showed that the reduction methods would vary depending on the location. In urban areas, in order to reduce sulphate particles, the reduction of volatile organics must be more than nitrogen oxides. However in rural areas, the opposite seems true. The researchers noted that even these generalizations do not always hold true. Sometimes by lowering nitrogen oxides, sulphate aerosols would actually increase because of the other chemical present in the atmosphere.

Researchers from the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre in Bergen, Norway, found that the Norwegian Sea could provide safe and long term storage of carbon dioxide produced from the offshore oil and gas fields.

The researchers used computer models to predict the amount of carbon dioxide from the offshore oil and gas fields that would reach the surface of the seawater and enter the atmosphere based on the depth at which it was originally released. The study assumed the annual carbon dioxide emissions from the various size gas power plants over a ten-year period. The study showed that if the carbon dioxide was released at a depth of 950 metres below the seawater level, virtually no outgassing would occur and the carbon dioxide-enriched water stayed well below the level at which it mixed with the upper ocean water. Following normal flows from the Norwegian Sea, this water with upper ocean water would enter the northern Atlantic Ocean as bottom water and remain isolated from the atmosphere for centuries. The study also showed that if the initial size of the carbon dioxide particles is four millimeters or less, the plume would rise to no more than 100 metres from the point at which it enters the ocean.

The researchers noted that the process of sequestering carbon dioxide in the Norwegian Sea would increase the acidity of the ocean surface waters and affect the deep sea organisms. However the level of acidity could be reduced by not pumping all of the carbon dioxide to one point, but using rather an array of ports located 5 to 10 metres apart in the cross-stream of the prevailing current.

The Environment Minister of New South Wales (NSW) introduced a new waste package that would result in greater incentives for industry to divert waste from landfill, a continuous decline in the waste generated across all sectors and an increase in the recovery of resources from waste.

Under the new package, a new waste authority, called the Resource NSW, would be formed to coordinate waste avoidance and resource recovery programmes statewide. Resource NSW would be based in western Sydney, with offices in the Hunter, Illawarra and rural NSW. The existing Waste Service NSW would become part of Resource NSW and would be transformed into a state-owned corporation enabling it to better compete with private waste operators. In conjunction with councils, illegal dumping squads would also be formed. The current waste levy would be increase by $1 a tonne in Sydney and $1.50 in the Hunter, Illawarra and Central Coast to discourage land filling. An additional $4 million a year would be freed up for waste management programmes, with at least $2 million a year to help rural and regional councils implement waste reform. A new act, the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Act would be enacted to replace the current Waste Minimisation and Management Act.

At a two-day meeting in Geneva, convened under the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, international experts on hazardous waste and shipping issued a final set of international guidelines for the safe disposal of obsolete ships.

While attention usually focuses on the toxic cargos transported by ships, decommissioning a large vessel may itself involve the removal of many tons of hazardous wastes, including persistent organic pollutants, mercury, lead and asbestos. Workers, local communities, biodiversity, groundwater and air are all at risk during this process. The guidelines seek to minimise these risks by introducing universally applied principles for the environmentally sound management of ship scrapping. The experts addressed the design, construction and operation of ship dismantling facilities. They also detailed the manner in which potential contaminants should be identified and how the release of toxic substances could be prevented. The guidelines also specified procedures for the monitoring of environmental impacts, and response to emergencies and accidents.

The United States Transportation and Energy Departments and the Environmental Protection Agency conducted a study to access the effectiveness of the alternative fuel programme. Under the alternative fuel programme, automakers would be given special fuel economy credits for manufacturing vehicles which can operate with a mixture of gasoline and alternative fuels such as ethanol made from corn and other renewable crops.

The study showed that automakers had expanded production of alternative fuel vehicles but only a few of the vehicles actually use ethanol because of a lack of service stations supplying it. There were only 101 stations nationwide that provided fuel mixtures of gasoline and ethanol and only 2.9 percent of the 176,000 gas stations nationwide were alternative fuel stations. As a result, the programme might actually have lead to higher use of gasoline and greater greenhouse gases emissions. With the slow rate of growth of alternative fuel infrastructure, it does not appear likely that any energy conservation and environmental benefits will be realised by the year 2008.