Umweltchemie und ?kotoxikologie — Quo vadis?

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Polluter-Pays Principle and its Environmental Consequences for Industrial Waste Management

The paper maintains that, as a means toward achieving the ideal of a sustainable development, industrial waste should best be regarded in business-economic terms as having the same basic status as regular products. It is shown how an approach to proportioning industrial costs to waste that is described can be applied to the Polluter-Pays Principle in a way incorporating this principle into a company's internal estimation system. In two case studies presented, use of this approach is found to generate a waste-reducing incentive through showing waste to have a negative impact on estimates of profit.     

On temperature and water limitation of net ecosystem productivity: Implementation in the C-Fix model

Monitoring, understanding and modelling carbon emission and fixation fluxes are key actions to guide climate change stakeholders in the application of mitigation strategies. In this study, we use the remote sensing model C-Fix at the local stand scale to improve the integration of algorithms for water and temperature limitation. These new algorithms are applied to estimate net ecosystem productivity in a fully water limited mode.     

Territorial defense and advertisement by footdrumming in bannertail kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spectabilis) at high and low population densities

Summary Behaviors associated with territorial defense of large dirt mounds by bannertail kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spectabilis) at high and low population densities are reported. Rats were observed for 640 h during three summers and one spring from 1980–1982 in SE Arizona.Bannertail kangaroo rats defended their territories by footdrumming, as a long-distance warning signal, and chasing as a closer-distance threat. They footdrummed on or near their mounds spontaneosly during the night, in response to neighbors' footdrums, and durint mound challenges. There were no sexual differences in footdrumming, and juveniles frequently performed the behavior. The low frequency sounds were within the auditory sensitivities of the rats and footdrumming patterns differed somewhat between individuals. A playback experiment provided preliminary evidence that rats can differentiate between the footdrums of neighbors and strangers. When a bannertail visited the mound of another bannertail the mound owner actively defended its mound and immediately chased the visitor away. Fighting and mound challenges occurred infrequently, and the uniformly dispersed distribution of mounds suggested an effort by rats to avoid mutual interference.When population densities were high, dispersing juveniles built new mounds, consequently, distances between mounds decreased. Rats responded by tolerating closer neighbors, spending more time active on their mounds, and visiting neighboring mounds less. Adults increased footdrumming rates at high population densities, but juveniles footdrummed at high rates regardless of the population size.     

Substance flows through the economy and environment of a region

In the tradition of the study of materials flows through society, the Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) method and its software tool SFINX are presented. SFA aims at providing the relevant information for a country’s overall management strategy regarding single substances or coherent groups of substances. Three modelling techniques and their possibilities and limitations are discussed: Bookkeeping, static modelling, and dynamic modelling. The computer program SFINX can be used for varoius purposes: (1) to obtain an overview of stocks and flows of a substance in, out and through a nation’s economy and environment for a specific year, (2) to trace the origins of specific pollution problems, and (3) to estimate the effectiveness of certain abatement measures. Each application has its own requirements with regard to data and modelling.     

Expected,prenatally discovered,and born cases of Down syndrome in Denmark during the period 1980–1998

In order to elucidate the consistency between generally used age-dependent risk values for Down syndrome (DS) and estimates of the probability of miscarriage in Down pregnancies we have compared expected numbers with estimated numbers of births with DS in Denmark had no intervention at all been carried out. The expected numbers were calculated from the distribution of newborn children according to maternal age combined with the age-related risk of DS. The estimated numbers of children that actually would have been born without any intervention were estimated from observed numbers of cases of DS, i.e. the cases born plus – with corrections because of the high probability of miscarriage in DS pregnancies – a proportion of those cases discovered prenatally. The analysis was carried out separately for mothers aged 35 years or older and for younger mothers. We found a high degree of compatibility between expected and estimated numbers, probably with a minor underestimation of the expected values for the older mothers. The performance of DS screening in Denmark in the period under consideration (1980–1998) is discussed in relation to the figures presented. Despite the fact that 11.8% of all pregnancies were subjected to an invasive diagnostic procedure, only about 38% of all births with DS were prevented. This means that in the period 1990–1998, reluctance to accept serological screening has indirectly resulted in the birth of almost 300 cases of DS in Denmark and at the same time the miscarriage of an unreasonable high number of normal fetuses. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lessons learnt from a participatory integrated assessment of greenhouse gas emission reduction options in firms

This article discusses an approach for identification and evaluation of short-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction options in firms. The approach is based on lessons learnt from a project using Participatory Integrated Assessment (PIA) and builds on the idea that effective public climate policy for firms requires options that have support from stakeholders and are practically feasible. Scenarios are used to provide a link with short-term policy developments and a model assists to communicate quantitative effects of options to participating stakeholders. Our approach can be seen as a first step towards a framework that meets the need for more systematic approaches to PIAs identifying effective public policies for short-term GHG emission reduction options in firms. In order to identify effective options for non-carbon dioxide GHG emission reductions, our approach has been applied to Dutch dairy farms, after which it has been refined. The case study suggests that our approach can provide balance between practical, context specific issues and scientific-theoretical aspects, thereby avoiding common pitfalls of participatory research projects to focus too much on either theory or practical issues.