Argentine hospitals and clinics can no longer buy thermometers and blood-pressure gauges containing mercury under an order signed by Health Minister Graciela Ocaña. The new policy, announced and implemented last month, puts Argentina in sync with recommendations made by the World Health Organization, which has warned that health facilities are a leading source of mercury contamination. Still unresolved by the minister’s order is what the health industry will do with existing equipment containing mercury. The order calls for the creation of a professionals’ group to address that issue and for training health professionals in the handling of mercury waste. “Mercury is a heavy metal with high potential for impact in ecosystems,” Ocaña’s order states. “The risks from exposure to heavy metals are considered among...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
When Brazilian authorities granted a preliminary license last September for construction of the country’s third nuclear plant, a key question remained: Would Ibama, Brazil’s environmental permitting agency, stand by the strict waste-disposal condition it had placed on the project? That condition required the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN), Brazil’s nuclear regulatory agency, to draft a plan for the permanent disposal of high- level radioactive waste before the 1,400-megawatt, R$7.2 billion (US$3.1 billion) reactor could be put into service. (See “Big ‘if’ facing Brazil’s plan for third reactor”—EcoAméricas, Oct. ’08.) Ibama all but answered that question this month, when it granted a construction license for the proposed plant, Angra 3. This time, the condition accompanying the permit was substantially less rigorous...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Amazonia—the world’s largest river basin, covering nine countries and draining an area three-quarters the size of China—faces a dizzying array of threats. Among them are migration, agricultural expansion, deforestation, unplanned urban development, oil drilling, mining, biodiversity loss and climate change. Environmentalists and policy makers trying to assess the scope of these problems and design comprehensive policy solutions have been hampered by fragmented information gathered in ways that have not always been uniform from country to country. A new study by the United Nations Environment Program and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (Acto), tries to fill that gap, providing data on topics including population, deforestation, hydroelectricity, hydrocarbons, protected areas, water resources, endangered species, land-use changes, carbon absorption and economics. “This is the...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
German and Nicaraguan authorities have inaugurated a US$86 million sewage-treatment project intended to clean up the putrid wastewater flowing into Lake Managua within two years. The project includes a $50 million lakeshore plant that will turn raw sewage into fertilizer while using gases released in the treatment process to help fuel the facility, thus making it more energy-efficient. Much of Managua’s raw sewage has run straight into the lake for eight decades—currently to the tune of 40 million gallons daily. Seventeen city sewer lines lead into the lake, which also is subject to contamination from polluted streams and seepage from Managua’s biggest trash dump, located on the lakeshore. Green advocates see the plant, which came online last month, as an encouraging...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Costa Rica’s top environmental official resigned this month amid allegations he approved a concession that benefited his uncle. Roberto Dobles stepped down March 10 after his resignation was accepted by President Oscar Arias, who said he hopes the scandal will not taint the three years of work Dobles put in as head of the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry. The influence-peddling scandal was the latest source of friction between Dobles and Costa Rica’s environmental movement. Green organizations decried Dobles’ support for a controversial open-pit gold mining project, and they accused him of allowing rampant coastal development and failing to crack down on pineapple companies using damaging chemicals. Costa Rica’s Ecological Federation (Fecon), an umbrella group of environmental organizations here, welcomed news of Dobles...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
