Bioavailability of chemicals in the environment has been the topic of scientific research for a number of years. Following up on requests from within the field of risk assessment and standard setting, the Stearing Group "Integral Standard Setting" (INS) asked for an advice on the future role of biological availability in standard setting and risk assessment. A workshop was organised in response to this request. In this report the main recommendations of the workshop are given. In addition, a number of policyrelated advises are incorporated, including an assessment of the time frames needed. The aim of the report is to review the utility of bioavailability-related research for standard setting and risk assessment and to put the expected applicability of the results of this research in a realistic time frame. It is foreseen that implementation of the topics with potential for future implementation in risk assessment or standard setting, will result in a more realistic risk assessment. The reliability of the present policy on chemical substances will benefit without defecting the environment. An active attitude from regulating bodies is essential for implementing the potentially favourable options and to stimulate researchers to focus their research activities on those topics that are most relevant from a policy making point of make. In addition to these general conclusions, detailed information on all options dealing with bioavailability of metals and organic substances in water, sediment and soil is given in the report.<br>

This report is one of the background reports of the evaluation report "MINAS en Milieu" It deals with the impact of fertiliser- and manure application in agriculture on the quality of soil (phosphrus) en groundwater (phosphorus/nitrogen). It is based on monitoring data carried out in the period 1984-2000. The report describes the actual status of quality standards with respect to nutrients. The agricultural soils in the Netherlands are in general phosphorus-rich. Nitrate concentrations in groundwater are high in shallow groundwater (in 2000 in sandy areas ca 125 mg/l: more than twice the standard value) but show a decrease since 1995, due to lower N-surpluses in dairy farming. At greater depths, concentrations are lower due to a combination of slow travel time, hydrology and decay (denitrification). In certain areas the abstracted groundwater for public water supply shows an increase of co-products of denitrifiaction e.g. sulphate, metals (nickel) and hardness.<br>

The economic assessment of priorities for a European environmental policy plan focuses on twelve identified Prominent European Environmental Problems such as climate change, chemical risks and biodiversity. The study, commissioned by the European Commission (DG Environment) to a European consortium led by RIVM, provides a basis for priority setting for European environmental policy planning in support of the sixth Environmental Action Programme as follow-up of the current fifth Environmental Action Plan called 'Towards Sustainability'. The analysis is based on an examination of the cost of avoided damage, environmental expenditures, risk assessment, public opinion, social incidence and sustainability. The study incorporates information on targets, scenario results, and policy options and measures including their costs and benefits. Main findings of the study are the following. Current trends show that if all existing policies are fully implemented and enforced, the European Union will be successful in reducing pressures on the environment. However, damage to human health and ecosystems can be substantially reduced with accelerated policies. The implementation costs of these additional policies will not exceed the environmental benefits and the impact on the economy is manageable. This requires future policies to focus on least-cost solutions and follow an integrated approach. Nevertheless, these policies will not be adequate for achieving all policy objectives. Remaining major problems are the excess load of nitrogen in the ecosystem, exceedance of air quality guidelines (especially particulate matter), noise nuisance and biodiversity loss. This report is one of a series supporting the main report: European Environmental Priorities: an Integrated Economic and Environmental Assessment. The areas discussed in the main report are fully documented in the various Technical reports. A background report is presented for each environmental issue giving an outline of the problem and its relationship to economic sectors and other issues; the benefits and the cost-benefit analysis; and the policy responses. Additional reports outline the benefits methodology, the EU enlargement issue and the macro-economic consequences of the scenarios. This report documents the Nuclear Accidents issue.<br>

This report of the MATRIC project investigated 'Eco-efficiency in industrial production'. After a general introduction into the domain of eco-efficiency, the first part of this report further focusses on the organisation of Product-Oriented Environmental Management (POEM), which is defined as the systematic attention of a company for reducing the environmental impact of its products across the entire product lifecycle. The second part of this report focusses on the adoption of eco-efficient construction systems in Dutch house building. After a general description of socio-technical development in Dutch housing construction, the housing construction regime is described, special attention is given to the adoption paths of timber-frame and calcium silicate stone construction systems, and, finally lessons for the governance of socio-technical development in Dutch housing construction are drawn.

Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas. Wetland rice fields constitute one of the major anthropogenic CH4 sources but the source strength is surrounded by a large uncertainty. The work presented in this report aims at reducing the uncertainty in emissions from wetland rice fields by making independent estimates of regional CH4 source strengths: "up-scaling" from the soil-rice ecosystem perspective and "down-scaling" from the atmosphere perspective. Case studies in Java and the Philippines described the upscaling from point to regional scale, the Chinese case study focused on the regional to national scale. A process-based field scale model for CH4 emissions from rice paddies was made, validated and coupled to a Geographic Information System to scale up regional CH4 emissions from rice paddies. Potential land use changes for Java and China were quantified with a land use change model and predicted changes were evaluated using the CH4 emission model, proxy methods and emission factors. Simultaneously, trend analysis of rice field emissions indicates that (1) rice yield increases have usually not resulted in increased methane emissions per unit of harvested area and, (2) global annual emission from rice fields may be considerably lower than generally assumed, partly because of recent decreases in the use of organic amendments. Rice agriculture is a dynamic activity, economical changes and technological advances influenced the emission levels and will continue to do so. This makes fixing the CH4 source strength of rice paddies difficult and increases uncertainties. Downscaling from the global scale to regional scale was pursued by inverse modelling of the sources and sinks of atmospheric CH4. Improvements were made in the availability of measurements and a priori information, the accuracy of the atmospheric transport model, and the applied inverse modeling technique. Constraining the global rice CH4 source using inverse modelling, was explored by comparing a standard rice emission scenario (80 +- 50 Tg yr-1) and a low rice emission scenario (30 +- 15 Tg yr-1) but an unambiguous answer could not be obtained. To reduce uncertainty in other CH4 sources, ice core data and simulations of pre-industrial methane were used to estimate the pre-industrial natural wetland source strength at 163 +-30 Tg (CH4) yr-1, current emissions being possibly 10% smaller. A combination of upscaling and downscaling is at present not able to validate rice emission estimates at the intermediate scale in the Asian region. Regional scale emission measurements are essential to validate and improve upscaling methods and regional CH4 budgets.

The STONE model for nitrogen and phosphorus emission to the groundwater and surface waters has been developed to evaluate the environmental consequences of policies regarding manure and agriculture. In 2000, an advisory body ('The Spiertz Commission') explicitly asked for validation of the Dutch eutrophication models. This report summarises the most important findings of the so-called 'STONE test'. STONE results were compared with monitoring data at different spatial scales from the field scale up to the national scale. At the field scale, conclusions were drawn on process descriptions and temporal dynamics. At the national scale, spatial patterns and frequency distributions were investigated. Here, STONE slightly underestimated the median nitrate concentrations in the upper groundwater. Also, the correlation between measured and simulated concentrations of nitrogen in the groundwater was good. Large differences were, however, found at the regional scale. These differences might be attributed to errors in the manure transport and application module. This suggests that STONE is not yet suitable for applications at the regional scale. The predicted concentration of nitrate and phosphorus in drain water was higher than the actual concentration of these compounds in surface waters. This was expected, because riparian retention and loss processes in surface waters were not modelled. Future research should be directed towards (i) improving the model performance at the regional scale, and (ii) further validation of the surface water component of STONE by combining the model with a surface water model.<br>

To support enforcement of the 'Regulation on packaging and packaging waste' in the Netherlands a pilot study has been performed on heavy metals, particularly cadmium, lead, mercury and hexavalent chromium, in packaging materials. Packaging may not contain more than 100 mg/kg of these four metals. The study consisted of a literature search focused on the packaging chain, the amount of packaging in circulation and the levels of heavy metals in different types of packaging materials. In addition, a number of synthetic packaging samples in the chain were selected from few companies for analysis of heavy metal content. Synthetic packaging was found to be the most critical group when it came to amounts of heavy metals in the packaging and the emissions to the environment from packaging waste. Approximately 7-8% of the analysed samples failed to meet the criteria in the Regulation. Screening samples in the field with the use of a portable XRF analyser, followed by a selection of suspected samples for laboratory analysis with advanced XRF and ICP-MS, turned out to be an efficient strategy. Provided that a few conditions are fulfilled, both XRF and ICP-MS will be suitable methods of analysis for enforcing the Regulation. XRF is preferred because of its greater efficiency level.

Environmental pressure has been approached by many experts as being a result of population, prosperity and technological efficiency. A research project has been set up to develop a model structure for constructing consumption scenarios and determining the energy requirement of the inhabitants of the Netherlands for these scenarios. In the model, consumption is determined by economic growth, demographic changes, sociocultural developments, technological enhancement and policy measures, rather than behaviour related to one specific component of consumption. Because analyses of consumption and implications of specific policy measures require a detailed level of information on expenditures, environmental pressure and their interrelationships, we also considered a detailed level of consumption components. The starting point of the research has been to fit human behaviour within boundaries like time, money and available space. A system of models has been developed, in which several kinds of models are found for consumption, including a central unit. This report gives an overview of the models in this system and the relationships between several models.

Abstract not available

Abstract not available