Publications | Umweltbundesamt

Health, Water

Current approaches to Cyanotoxin risk assessment, risk management and regulations in different countries (2012)

The VIIIth International Conference on Toxic Cyanobacteria (ICTC), held in September 2010 Istanbul, Turkey, included a session in which scientists and regulators reported approaches to controlling hazards from toxic cyanobacteria implemented or discussed in their country, as well as awareness of the issue. Presentations demonstrated substantial recent progress in the per-ception of cyanotoxins as...read more

Chemicals

Handbook Communication Strategies for Sharpening Environmental Awareness in the Handling of Pharmaceutical Drugs

In Germany, as in almost all industrial countries, active pharmaceutical substances can now be found in virtually all water bodies and occasionally also in drinking water. Even though the concentrations in question tend to be very low, there are initial signs of their  impact on aquatic life. There is no evidence as yet of any acute consequences for human health. It is, however, impossible to rule...read more

Climate | Energy, Soil | Land

What Matters 2012

Annual Report of the Federal Environment Agency

Part: a departure into a new era - the elements of a sustainable energy supply ; Resource efficiency - a key skill for sustainable societies ; Sustainable chemistry - an elemantary building block of a Green Economy. Germany has decided the transformation of its energy sys-tem. The new energy era requires a fundamental transfor-mation of energy supply. This poses great challenges to the country, bu...read more

Climate | Energy, Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

The energy concept of the Federal Environment Agency´s office building in Dessau

Technical innovations for sustainable operation

The new office building of the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) was erected as a model project for sustainable building with very ambitious goals. In order to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil energy sources, the energy demand of the building to be constructed had to be as low as possible to allow sustainable operation. The prime prerequisite for minimizing the energy...read more

Transport

Achieving sustainability in urban transport in developing and transition countries

Transport accounted for 23% of global CO2 emissions in 2007. It is expected that both the overall emissions and the demand for energy in transport will continue to rise in the next decades unless appropriate policy measures are introduced. While fossil fuels will become scarce over the next decades, mobility is one of the basic needs of people today and there is a reinforcing correlation between e...read more

Chemicals

Elaboration of a concept for the cumulative environmental exposure assessment of biocides

The study proves the feasibility of a technical realisation of Article 10(1) of the BPD and elaborates a first concept for the cumulative environmental exposure assessment of biocides.read more

Chemicals

Basic principles for the development of a concept for environmental exposure assessments of single substances released from multiple uses under REACH

The ECHA Guidance Documents R.12 to R.18 include detailed provisions on how to conduct an exposure assessment as part of the Chemical Safety Report. The guidance documents, however, only restrictedly address the consideration of a substance’s emissions into the environment, if the local releases from various uses of the same substance result in a cumulative exposure. In a situation where a chemica...read more

Economy | Consumption

Sensory-based evaluation of building product emissions

Integration into the Blue Angel award criteria and assessment scheme of the Committee for Health Evaluation of Building Products

Emissions from building products considerably impair the quality of indoor air. The AgBB scheme has been used to evaluate the emissions of volatile organic compounds (⁠VOC⁠) from building products. The hygienic evaluation according to the AgBB scheme requires product-specific measurement methods which are already available for a number of products. They have been validated in co-oper...read more