Arzneimittel in der Umwelt: Umweltschutz im Arzneimittelrecht

The purpose of medicinal products is to act effectively on living organisms. If they reach environmental compartments it should be taken into account that they may have effects on biota in these compartments. Legislation on medicinal products has given little consideration to the risk that medicinal products may pose to the environment. In the near future there will be some progress according to amendments to the relevant legislative provisions.     

Regions on their way to sustainability: the role of institutions in fostering sustainable development at the regional level

Sustainable regional development as a politically requested concept challenges regions within the European Union since the Amsterdam Treaty 1997. A growing body of literature identifies cooperation between stakeholder groups as one of the limiting factors for implementing sustainable regional strategies. This leads to the question, how cooperation within a region could be organised. How can institutions support the implementation process of sustainable development on the regional level? Regional institutions are both supporters of cooperation between regional stakeholders and key players in regional development processes. Their connections strengthen the importance of networks in the sustainable regional development process.     

How to improve reliability in groundwater analysis: over a decade of experience with external quality control in field campaigns on volatile halogenated compounds

The reliability in measurement results obtained during environmental monitoring is crucial for the assessment and further planning of remediation efforts on the respective contaminated sites by the responsible authorities. A case study concerned with groundwater contaminated with perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene and 1,1,2-trichlorotrifluoroethane including their degradation products which involves private contract laboratories and an independent provider of quality assurance (QA) is presented. The experience gained with biannual monitoring campaigns over 14 years indicates that the selection of contractors on basis of accreditation status and successful performance in interlaboratory comparisons are not sufficient. Rather the auditing of the contractors by the QA provider prior to each campaign and the crosschecking of selected monitoring samples by the QA provider led to a lasting improvement of reliability in the contractors' measurement results. A mean deviation of 20% from the reference value determined by the QA provider for the crosschecked samples was reached.     

The energy consumption of Paris and its supply areas from the eighteenth century to the present

Since the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution, cities have experienced great changes in their metabolism, and particularly in their energy consumption: transitions from one energy source to another, growing per capita consumption, and total consumption to cite but a few. These changes also impact urban energy supply areas and supply distance. This paper estimates Paris??s energy demand in both final and primary terms since the eighteenth century and gives an illustration of long-term socio-ecological interactions in an interdisciplinary perspective, connecting energy flow analysis, and historical research. It gives an overview of energy supply areas and assesses the distance between supply sites and the city. Paris??s annual total energy requirement (TER) was about 19?GJ per capita at the beginning of the eighteenth century and reached 30?GJ per capita in 1800; the supply area remained nearly the same with an average supply distance (D_avg) of 200?km. During the nineteenth century, Paris??s population increased fivefold, and energy transitioned from biomass to fossil fuel. Per capita TER remained stable, whereas Paris??s supply area moved progressively toward coal basins, in connection with the tremendous change in transport systems. As a consequence, the D_avg grew to 270?km around 1870. During the twentieth century, and especially since the Interwar period, per capita TER increased considerably (to 26?GJ/cap/year in 1910, 47?GJ/cap/year in 1946 and 126?GJ/cap/year in 2006). The internationalization of the energy supply and the shift to petroleum and natural gas also increased the remoteness of the supply sites: the D_avg equaled 3850?km in 2006.     

A dynamic modelling approach for estimating critical loads of nitrogen based on plant community changes under a changing climate

A dynamic model of forest ecosystems was used to investigate the effects of climate change, atmospheric deposition and harvest intensity on 48 forest sites in Sweden (n = 16) and Switzerland (n = 32). The model was used to investigate the feasibility of deriving critical loads for nitrogen (N) deposition based on changes in plant community composition. The simulations show that climate and atmospheric deposition have comparably important effects on N mobilization in the soil, as climate triggers the release of organically bound nitrogen stored in the soil during the elevated deposition period. Climate has the most important effect on plant community composition, underlining the fact that this cannot be ignored in future simulations of vegetation dynamics. Harvest intensity has comparatively little effect on the plant community in the long term, while it may be detrimental in the short term following cutting. This study shows: that critical loads of N deposition can be estimated using the plant community as an indicator; that future climatic changes must be taken into account; and that the definition of the reference deposition is critical for the outcome of this estimate.     

PEPC-Aktivität

The criteria currently used to determine the extent of novel forest decline areleaf loss andyellowing of leaves. However, these criteria have only a limited value for indicating damage of woody trees, especially the early stages. Therefore, physiological-biochemical parameters will be useful to measure the extent of forest decline. Results from several natural spruce stands indicate that in needles with early signs of damage and needles with severe damage PEPC activity is significantly higher than in needles of healthy plants. Therefore, PEPC activity can reveal beginning damage and may be used as abiochemical indicator for damage assessments of spruce. The influence of air pollutants on PEPC activity in spruce needles was measured in fumigation chambers and open-top chambers; PEPC activity was shown to be affected by long-term exposition only.     

Application of fuzzy models to assess susceptibility to droughts from a socio-economic perspective

By combining the concepts of environmental stress, state susceptibility and environmental crisis, “Security Diagram” (SD) provides a quantitative approach to assessing environmental change and human security. The SD is a tool that clearly presents in a diagram the security situation of a population or region affected by a particular environmental crisis. Its underlying concept emphasises that the higher the level of environmental stress and socio-economic susceptibility, the higher the probability of the occurrence of crisis. Focusing on drought, this study analyses the susceptibility of case study regions in India, Portugal, and Russia from a socio-economic perspective. A conceptual framework of socio-economic susceptibility is developed based on the economic development theories of modernisation and dependency. Fuzzy set theory is used to generate susceptibility indices from a range of national and sub-national indicators, including financial resources, agricultural dependency and infrastructure development (for economic susceptibility), and health condition, educational attainment and gender inequality (for social susceptibility). Results indicate that socio-economic susceptibility over the period 1980–1995 was highest in India, followed by Russia and (since 1989) lowest in Portugal. Globalisation is likely to contribute to changes in the level of socio-economic susceptibility over time. Moreover, specific social and economic structures unique in each country (e.g., the role of women in society in India, the socialist legacy in Russia) may explain differences in susceptibility between the case study regions.