全球可持续发展中民间规制策略分析

本文简要评析了国际经济与社会可持续发展中民间规制的现状,指出尽管国际民间规制对规范与提升国际经济行为发挥了十分积极的作用,一定程度上弥补了政府公共治理的局限,但无论是在国际上还是国内范围,它们都不足以成为经济发展进程中政府规制的替代品.     

Integrated testing and intelligent assessment—new challenges under REACH

BACKGROUND, AIM AND SCOPE: Due to a number of drawbacks associated with the previous regime for the assessment of new and existing chemicals, the European Union established a new regulation concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (REACH). All relevant industrial chemicals must now be assessed. Instead of the authorities, industry itself is responsible for the risk assessment. To achieve better and more efficient assessments while reducing animal testing, all information-standard, non-standard and non-testing-has to be used in an integrated manner. To meet these challenges, the current technical guidance documents for risk assessment of new and existing chemicals had to be updated and extended considerably. This was done by experts in a number of REACH Implementation Projects. This paper presents the most relevant results of the expert Endpoint Working Group on Aquatic Toxicity in order to illustrate the change of paradigm in the future assessment of hazards to the aquatic environment by chemical substances. MAIN FEATURES AND CHALLENGES: REACH sets certain minimum data requirements in order to achieve a high level of protection for human health and the environment. It encourages the assessor to use alternative information instead of or in addition to standard one. This information has to be equivalent to the standard information requirement and adequate to draw overall conclusions with respect to the regulatory endpoints classification and labelling, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) assessment and predicted no-effect concentrations (PNEC) derivation. The main task of the expert working group was to develop guidance on how to evaluate the toxicity of a substance based on integration of information from different sources and of various degrees of uncertainty in a weight of evidence approach. INTEGRATED TESTING AND INTELLIGENT ASSESSMENT: In order to verify the equivalence and adequacy of different types of information, a flexible sequence of steps was proposed, covering characterisation of the substance, analysis of modes of action, identification of possible analogues, evaluation of existing in vivo and in vitro testing data as well as of QSAR results. Finally, all available data from the different steps have to be integrated to come to an overall conclusion on the toxicity of the substance. This weight of evidence approach is the basis for the development of integrated testing strategies (ITS), in that the available evidence can help to determine subsequent testing steps and is essential for an optimal assessment. Its flexibility helps to meet the different requirements for drawing conclusions on the endpoints classification and labelling, PNEC derivation as well as PBT assessment. The integration of all kinds of additional information in a multi-criteria assessment reduces the uncertainties involved with extrapolation to the ecosystem level. The weight of evidence approach is illustrated by practical examples. CONCLUSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES: REACH leads to higher challenges in order to make sound decisions with fewer resources, i.e. to move away from extensive standard testing to an intelligent substance-tailored approach. Expert judgement and integrated thinking are key elements of the weight of evidence concept and ITS, potentially leading to better risk assessments. Important sub-lethal effects such as endocrine disruption, which are not covered by the current procedure, can be considered. Conclusions have to be fully substantiated: Risk communication will be an important aspect of future assessments.     

城市施工噪声污染防治——以南京市鼓楼区施工噪声为例

对辖区内的建筑施工噪声进行了概述，分析了建筑施工噪声之所以成为群众关注的热点、难点问题的成因，并就防治建筑施工噪声扰民问题提出了探讨性意见。     

Moving policy and regulation forward for single-use plastic alternatives

Single-use plastics are often used once or cannot be reused for extended periods. They are widely consumed with the rapid development of social economy. The waste generated by single-use plastics threatens ecosystem health by entering the environment and ultimately restricts sustainable human development. The innovation of sustainable and environmentally friendly single-use plastic alternative materials and the joint participation of governments, enterprises and the public are promising technologies and management approaches that can solve the problem of single-use plastics wastes. The development of single-use plastic alternative products can be promoted fundamentally only by improving relevant legislation and standards, providing differentiated industrial policies, encouraging scientific and technological innovation and expanding public participation.     

Reproduction versus work in queenless ants: when to join a hierarchy of hopeful reproductives?

Many animal societies contain few breeders and many helpers. In some species, individuals can become either helpers or breeders, and breeding is often restricted to high rankers in a dominance hierarchy. In social Hymenoptera with no morphological queen caste, all females have the potential to become dominant and reproduce. In our model, females involved in the hierarchy do not work and gain direct fitness if they become alpha following death of the current alpha, while females not in the hierarchy gain indirect fitness by working. Using an inclusive-fitness model combined with models of alpha replacement in slightly different types of near-linear hierarchies, we determined the critical rank (i.e., optimal hierarchy length) for which the gain in fitness by entering the hierarchy as a hopeful reproductive equals the cost caused by a reduced worker force. High relatedness decreases the hierarchy length by lowering the potential benefit of entering the hierarchy. In contrast, large colony size increases the hierarchy length because the cost of each non-working high ranker is relatively lower. The model predicts a hierarchy of five workers in the queenless ant Dinoponera quadriceps, close to empirical data which show that in a colony of about 100 females, the top 5 carry out 72.8% of the aggressive interactions. The model is also used to make several testable predictions about the effect on hierarchy length of (1) variation in colony size and (2) variation in worker reproductive options between species of the queenless ants genus Diacamma. Received: 16 March 1999 / Received in revised form: 30 June 1999 / Accepted: 11 July 1999     

Policy, Principle, and Practice in Industrial Pollution Control: Views from the Regulatory Interface

There has been much criticism of the system for the control of industrial pollution, but not much is known about the views of the regulators and the industry. The objective of this study was to explore the attitudes at this regulatory interface towards the current and proposed regulatory system and make recommendations for improvements. The methodology involved a questionnaire survey sent to over 700 key personnel. Statistical analysis revealed similarities and significant differences between the views of industry and the regulator on the effectiveness of the current regime. Weaknesses related to the derivation and enforcement of standards were identified. The Environmental Quality Standards system was acknowledged to be flawed by both operators and regulators who agreed it should be improved by the expansion of listed chemicals, the introduction of sediment environmental quality standards and direct toxicity assessment of effluents. This paper concludes that these measures should be incorporated into the regulatory system, together with more rigorous enforcement of environmental performance standards including serious sanctions for non-compliance. In the longer term, a reappraisal of the regulatory system is required in order to establish an appropriate framework to ensure that environmental policy commitments are implemented.     

Setting up the criteria and credit-awarding scheme for building interior material selection to achieve better indoor air quality

Methods, standards, and regulations that are aimed to reduce indoor air pollution from building materials are critically reviewed. These are classified as content control and emission control. Methods and standards can be found in both of these two classes. In the regulation domain, only content control is enforced in some countries and some regions, and asbestos is the only building material that is banned for building use. The controlled pollutants include heavy metals, radon, formaldehyde, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Emission rate control based upon environment chamber testing is very much in the nature of voluntary product labeling and ranking, and this mainly targets formaldehyde and VOC emissions. It is suggested that radon emission from building materials should be subject to similar emission rate control. A comprehensive set criteria and credit-awarding scheme that encourages the use of low-emission building material is synthesized, and how this scheme can be practiced in building design is proposed and discussed.     

How contaminated with ammunition-derived lead is meat from European small game animals? Assessing and reducing risks to human health

Small game animals are generally hunted with lead gunshot which often fragments causing elevated lead concentrations in meat and presenting health risks to frequent consumers and vulnerable groups. We reviewed three decades of European data on lead concentrations in the meat of gamebirds, rabbits and hares across countries with various restrictions on lead gunshot use. Mean meat lead concentrations decreased to a low level in Denmark, the only country in the study with a total ban on lead gunshot use. In contrast, elsewhere in Europe meat lead concentrations increased over time, an unexplained and previously undescribed finding. The only regulatory restriction associated with a decrease in meat lead concentrations was the Danish total ban on lead gunshot use. We calculated an arithmetic mean lead concentration in small game meat of 5.205 ppm w.w. (2011–2021) from across Europe. EU and UK regulators are considering banning lead ammunition for all hunting to protect human and wildlife health. The mean value we found for small game meat (2011–2021) was fourteen times higher than that used in a recent EU-wide risk assessment.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-022-01737-9.     

Regulation of reproduction by dominant workers in bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queenright colonies

The mechanisms of regulating worker reproduction in bumblebees were studied by direct behavioral observations and by measuring ovarian development and juvenile hormone (JH) biosynthesis rates in workers under different social conditions. Workers in the last stage of Bombus terrestris colony development (the competition phase) had the lowest ovarian development and JH biosynthesis rates. Callows introduced into colonies immediately after queen removal (dequeened colonies) demonstrated a significant increase in ovarian development before, but not during, the competition phase. These findings differ from the higher ovarian development in colonies during the competition phase predicted by the prevailing hypothesis that worker reproduction starts in response to a decrease in queen inhibition. Reproduction of callows housed with dominant workers in small queenless groups was inhibited as in queenright colonies. This suggests that the reduced ovarian development and JH biosynthesis rates observed in dequeened and normally developing colonies during the competition phase also reflect inhibition by dominant workers. Thus, two distinct stages of inhibition of reproduction seem to exist: (1) before the competition phase, when the queen slows down worker ovarian development and prevents oviposition; (2) during the competition phase, when dominant workers inhibit ovarian development of other workers. Between these stages there seems to be a temporal “window” of enhanced worker reproductive development. The queen's typical switch to haploid egg production was not associated with changes in worker ovarian development or JH biosynthesis rates. These findings suggest that regulation of worker reproduction in B. terrestris is not determined by simple changes in the queen's inhibition capacity or by the sex of offspring and that the worker's role is more important than previously believed. Received: 18 March 1998 / Accepted after revision: 18 July 1998     

欧盟REACH法规研究

解读欧盟REACH法规,分析了欧盟REACH法规对国内产业,尤其是对中国石化的影响,为中国石化具体实践上述法规奠定了工作基础.