Publications

Environmental authorities globally are challenged with the complexity of problems associated with contaminated sites. For protecting human beings and the quality of the environmental media air, water and soil, the prevention and elimination of hazards as well as impact mitigation are crucial.

For REACH a board of appeal (BoA) is established within the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in order to guarantee processing of appeals for any natural or legal person affected by decisions taken by ECHA. This report summarized the status and the development of the Board of Appeal since REACH entered into force.

The subject of this project was the preparation of substance reports for five substances relevant for building products emissions. For these substances, the toxicological data basis was researched, compiled and evaluated, and EU-LCI values were proposed. The EU-LCI values allow the harmonisation of the health assessment of building products emissions throughout Europe.

Strong algal growth, water turbidity, overfishing, underwater noise or trash not only on the beaches are just a few examples that the North Sea and Baltic Sea are confronted with. The latest status assessment of the German North Sea and Baltic Sea waters from 2018 shows that a good status of marine waters is still a long way off.

To further prevent and reduce the pollution of air, water, and soil and to safeguard human health and well-being, the European regulatory framework needs to be improved to include a cross-regulatory approach.

Climate protection scenarios are an important basis for long-term climate protection planning. The modelling, which is often carried out in extensive studies, is a central source of information for decision makers and stakeholders in the development of climate protection strategies.

The project aimed to improve the European background database used by the Coordination Centre for Effects (CCE) to calculate Critical Loads (CLs) for eutrophication and acidification for (semi-) natural European terrestrial ecosystems. The database is used when member countries do not provide their own CL data to the CCE.

In 2008, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive entered into force, with the overall objective to achieve and/or maintain a good status of the marine environment by 2020. The good environmental status has to be defined in accordance with qualitative Descriptors specified through a Commission Decision.

Many chemicals for which a PBT assessment is necessary are ionized in the environment. Therefore, the project aimed to find appropriate screening criteria for ionic organic chemicals (IOCs) to estimate their bioaccumulation potential. Twenty possible parameters were examined.

Digitisation is not only transforming our society it is also having an impact on the environment: On the one hand, digitisation can improve the state of the environment for example through digitally optimised production processes.

In summer 2020, the European Commission launched the Renovation Wave Initiative as an important building block of the European Green Deal. The aim is to at least double the renovation rates of public and private buildings over the next ten years and to promote deeper renovations.

The aim of this study is to contribute to a learning process about innovative and successful approaches to overcoming problems and challenges of urban environmental protection. To this end, a detailed overview of the importance of environmental challenges, political priorities and successful solutions in selected countries and cities is given.