Publications

We are at the beginning of the year 2004 and thus only few weeks away from the enlargement of the European Union to 25 member states. Objective, reliable, and comparative data and information are a prerequisite for European policy to ensure a sound basis for transboundary and harmonised decision making.

Protecting the Baltic Sea from environmental impact remains important even 30 years after foundation of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM). Every year some one billion kilograms of nitrogen and roughly 40 million kilograms of phosphorous are still being discharged into the Baltic Sea, of which more than half stems from agriculture.

This brochure ‘Environmental Health in Germany’ (German title: “Umwelt und Gesundheit in Deutschland”) is addressing a set of topics related to environmental health – to our health and our environment. It is illustrated by everyday examples.

Due to different directives on the national and the European level it is necessary to analyse the fate of chemicals in the environment using exposure models. By combining the results of these models with ecotoxicity data the risk assessment is performed. Usually, this analysis is performed based on EUSES (EC (1996),EC (2003a)). It calculates the fate of chemicals based on generic scenarios.

Measurement of air pollution emissions and ambient air quality is an essential instrument for air quality evaluation and control. In such measurements, pollutants are registered both at their place of origin (emissions) and at the place where they may affect people and/or the environment (immissions1).

It it generally accepted in the international field of risk assessment research that the effects of transgenic organisms have to be assessed ‘case by case‘ and ‘step by step‘. While most physiological effects can be studied in laboratory and greenhouse, ecological, agronomic and economic effects are partly only assessable in field tests or commercial growing and by modelling.

The emission behaviour with regard to dust, ozone and VOC (TVOC) of nine different hardcopy devices in combination with suitable air sampling and analysis procedures was investigated in different emission test chambers (two different 1 m³ - chambers and one 20 m³ - chamber).

Wspolny raport o jakosci powietrza w trojgranicznym regionie Republiki Czeskiej, Polski i Niemeic w roku 2003 (byly region Czarnego Trojkata)

According to estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), international aviation contributes about 3.5% to global warming.1 If growth in aviation volume continues at the same rate as in the 1990s, when international aviation grew 4% annually, the contribution of international aviation to the greenhouse effect could, already in 2010, be higher than Germany's contribution to

This study addresses the compatibility of the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) with obligations under world trade law as administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO). In particular we look at the instruments of German domestic and international energy policy.

In order to enable the conceivement and enforcement of efficient measures for environmental precaution and protection, it is necessary to undertake an environmental systems analysis. Against the background of this assumption, a concept for a federal ecosystem research program has been initiated by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 1978.

Already in 1990 the German Government decided, as its contribution to the limitation of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% by 2005 – base year 1990 – and to limit or reduce other greenhouse gases.