Some studies of thermal degradation in anion exchange systems

Imperial Users onl

'Read this and be safe!' Comparison of regulatory processes for communicating risks of personal care products to European and South African consumers

BACKGROUND:Most personal care products (PCPs) contain hazardous ingredients, but current legislation in the European Union (EU) and South Africa (SA) does not require these to be labelled as hazardous products. Instead, ingredients must only be listed on containers to inform consumers of potential hazards. We assessed whether current legal strategies provide the means for effective risk communication (RC) mechanisms for PCPs in order to protect consumers' health and the environment.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS:RC strategies used in developed countries are not necessarily better compared to developing countries despite the existence of extensive legislation in the former. Socio-cultural factors, scientific literacy and language differences are key reasons why the current ingredient lists on PCP labels are not an effective RC strategy. The assumption is that consumers will interpret the risks of these ingredients by conducting a risk assessment for their personal context. Realistically, the following risk mitigation measures should be implemented in developed and developing countries to reduce the public's potential exposures to hazardous substances: substitute hazardous ingredients with less hazardous; provide accessible mechanisms for consumers to comprehend RC measures; delete the exception clause in the EU Regulation on Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP); apply clear mandatory labels where PCPs health risks are clearly illustrated; and increase enforcement of legislation.The high incidence of fragrance allergies caused by PCPs is one example illustrating how current legal measures in the EU and SA fail to protect consumers and the environment from hazardous exposures. Therefore, efforts must be made to improve legally required RC measures

A new multi-sensor approach to simulation assisted tsunami early warning.

A new tsunami forecasting method for near-field tsunami warning is presented. This method is applied in the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System, as part of the Indonesian Tsunami Warning Center in Jakarta, Indonesia. The method employs a rigorous approach to minimize uncertainty in the assessment of tsunami hazard in the near-field. Multiple independent sensors are evaluated simultaneously in order to achieve an accurate estimation of coastal arrival times and wave heights within very short time after a submarine earthquake event. The method is validated employing a synthetic (simulated) tsunami event, and in hindcasting the minor tsunami following the Padang 30 September 2009 earthquake

Handling Uncertainty in Tsunami Early Warning: Interaction between Decision Support and Multi-Sensor Simulation System

The new InaTEWS/GITEWS tsunami early warning system has been designed to work reliably and quickly in the special case of near-field tsunamis with extremely short warning times. In order to avoid false warnings this system is equipped with a multi-sensor simulation system which can evaluate multiple online measurement values simultaneously. With this system, within short time a reliable small number of scenarios can be selected to serve as an early situation assessment. However, in order to support a decision maker for issuing warning products, a thorough analysis of the simulation results and a blending with additional geographic and socio-economic information is necessary. In this paper the interplay between decision support system and simulation system is illustrated