Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Registration of pesticides in Greece has lately improved a lot towards safety in ecosystems. The main tool for this progress has been the European registration scheme which had to be implemented in Greece, harmonized to local conditions. Still, even today, data such as differential responses of weeds, pests and crop varieties in the species or varietal level are not handled in a systematic approach.

The wastewaters from pulp and paper production units are considered significant pollutants because of their physicochemical characteristics (color, suspended solids, high organic load, chlorinated compounds, tannins, lignins, etc.).

A study of air pollutants has been performed using the available data for the last ten years in the Greek costal town, Volos. Long-term air quality data is valuable and informative to understand in depth the trends that will lead to more realistic findings and conclusions, while the governmental regulatory policies have to use them, in order to reduce the emissions of primary and secondary air pollutants.

Ambient ozone concentrations were systematically monitored during the 1998-2003 growing seasons in several stations located in the Tatra Mountains (in both Slovak and Polish sides). Concentrations of O, determined either with ozone analysers or with passive samplers, were different between geographical location of the monitoring stations, monitored periods, and individual years. The average two-week long O concentrations ranged from 31 to 200 μg m-3. The average O concentrations, for the growing season (May to September), ranged from about 60 to about 120 μg m-3. The highest ozone concentrations were recorded in Slovakia, on the southern slopes of the mountains. According to the active measurements the maximum 1-hour O concentrations reached 220 μg m-3 (August, 2001) and the monthly average O concentrations were close to 100 μg m-3.

The results of analysis of ambient ozone concentrations monitored since the summer of 1995 in the National Botanic Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv (semi-urban monitoring station) are presented. The diurnal and season patterns of ozone concentrations are given. So-called “weekend effect” phenomenon of enhanced ozone concentration was registered. The highest average hourly O3 concentrations observed were 168,8 μg/m (84,4 ppb). Adverse surface ozone effects on natural vegetation and hazardous for human health ozone episodes were studied and compared with critical values set by Directive 2002/2003 EC.

Ethical aspects are intrinsic to practically all branches of applied sciences but particularly to ecotoxicology and to environmental sciences. Such aspects are often overlooked because they are confounded into the technicalities of designing and performing the experiments and of analyzing and interpreting the data. In other situations the ethical aspects are intentionally ignored because short-term local economic interests dominate over the corresponding long-term ones and ethical considerations. Discussion on the relation between philosophy and ethics is avoided in the present talk. Instead, several examples ranging from the behaviour of the first European settlers in America to the uses of contemporary technology are given, revealing the diversity of situations in which ethical considerations are - or could be - applicable. Some relevant personal experiences of the author from Greece and abroad are also presented and discussed.

Numerical acceptable or unacceptable risk levels are often found in statute, administrative rules, guidelines or policies that can be used to compare against numerical risk levels calculated using accepted human health or ecological risk assessment paradigms.In practice, the numerical results of systematic, rigorous, and transparent risk analyses are used as inputs into the risk management process that does not have the same performance attributes of the risk assessment process described previously. The risk management process often morphs the definition of acceptable or unacceptable risk in a non-transparent manner resulting in inefficient multicriteria decision-making and public confusion on what is acceptable or unacceptable risk.

A working group discussed Methods and Tools in Ecotoxicology and Ecological Risk Assessment Related to Acceptable Risk for Critical and Non-critical Infrastructure. At the beginning of a discussion on issues of ecotoxicology, the working group recognized that, environmental toxicology has been and continues to be an important discipline. Ecological toxicology is required for predicting real world effects and ecology have shown similar developmental patterns over time. Closer cooperation between ecologists and toxicologists would benefit both disciplines. Two additional issues were discussed at the Working Group meting: