Ensuring the right to education for Roma children : an Anglo-Swedish perspective

Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well recognized internationally, particularly at the European level. They have prompted a range of policy initiatives and legal instruments to protect rights and promote equality and inclusion, on top of the framework of international human rights and minority protections. Nevertheless, states’ autonomy in tailoring educational arrangements to their budgets and national policy agendas has contributed to considerable international variation in specific provision for Roma children. As this article discusses, even between two socially liberal countries, the UK and Sweden, with their well-advanced welfare states and public systems of social support, there is a divergence in protection, one which underlines the need for a more consistent and positive approach to upholding the education rights and interests of children in this most marginalized and often discriminated against minority group

Decay of escherichia coli in soil following the application of biosolids to agricultural land

The decay of Escherichia coli in a sandy loam soil, amended with enhanced and conventionally treated biosolids, was investigated in a field experiment following spring and autumn applications of sewage sludge. Control soils, without the application of biosolids, were also examined to determine the background indigenous populations of E. coli which are present in the environment. The survival of indigenous E. coli and populations of E. coli applied to soil in biosolids, is assessed in relation to environmental factors influencing pathogen-decay processes in soil

Cross-Sector Review of Drivers and Available 3Rs Approaches for Acute Systemic Toxicity Testing

Acute systemic toxicity studies are carried out in many sectors in which synthetic chemicals are manufactured or used and are among the most criticized of all toxicology tests on both scientific and ethical grounds. A review of the drivers for acute toxicity testing within the pharmaceutical industry led to a paradigm shift whereby in vivo acute toxicity data are no longer routinely required in advance of human clinical trials. Based on this experience, the following review was undertaken to identify (1) regulatory and scientific drivers for acute toxicity testing in other industrial sectors, (2) activities aimed at replacing, reducing, or refining the use of animals, and (3) recommendations for future work in this area

Cadmium pigments in consumer products and their health risks

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal that has been increasingly regulated over the past few decades. The main exposure routes for the general public are the consumption of certain foods and the inhalation of cigarette smoke. However, additional exposure may occur through the current and historical use of the metal in consumer products. In this paper, the uses of Cd in consumer goods are reviewed, with the focus on brightly-coloured Cd sulphide and sulphoselenide pigments, and measurements of Cd in historical and contemporary products ascertained by XRF are reported. Cadmium is encountered across a wide range of contemporary plastic products, mainly because of the unregulated recycling of electronic waste and polyvinyl chloride. However, concentrations are generally low (<100 μg g−1), conforming with current limits and posing minimal risk to consumers. Of greater concern is high concentrations of pigmented Cd (up to 2% by weight) in old products, and in particular children's toys that remain in circulation. Here, tests conducted suggest that Cd migration in some products exceeds the Toy Safety Directive limit of 17 μg g−1 by an order of magnitude. The principal current use of Cd pigments is in ceramic products where the metal is encapsulated and overglazed. Leaching tests on new and secondhand items of hollowware indicate compliance with respect to the current Cd limit of 300 μg L−1, but that non-compliance could occur for items of earthenware or damaged articles should a proposed limit of 5 μg L−1 be introduced. The greatest consumer risk identified is the use of Cd pigments in the enamels of decorated drinking glasses. Thus, while décor is restricted to the exterior, any enamel within the lip area is subject to ready attack from acidic beverages because the pigments are neither encapsulated nor overglazed. Glass bottles decorated with Cd-based enamel do not appear to represent a direct health hazard but have the propensity to contaminate recycled glass products. It is recommended that decorated glassware is better regulated and that old, brightly-coloured toys are treated cautiously

The Impact of Domestic Energy Efficiency Retrofit Schemes on Householder Attitudes and Behaviours

Retrofitting existing housing stock to improve energy efficiency is often required to meet climate mitigation, public health and fuel poverty targets. Increasing uptake and effectiveness of retrofit schemes requires understanding of their impacts on householder attitudes and behaviours. This paper reports results of a survey of 500 Kirklees householders in the UK, where the Kirklees Warm Zone scheme took place. This was a local government led city-scale domestic retrofit programme that installed energy efficiency measures at no charge in over 50,000 houses. The results highlight key design features of the scheme, socio-economic and attitudinal factors that affected take-up of energy efficiency measures and impacts on behaviour and energy use after adoption. The results emphasise the role that positive feedback plays in reinforcing pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours of participants and in addressing concerns of non-participants. Our findings have implications for the design and operation of future domestic energy efficiency retrofit schemes

Challenges for Implementing an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management

The ecosystem approach is being promoted as the foundation of solutions to the unsustainability of fisheries. However, because the ecosystem approach is broadly inclusive, the science for its implementation is often considered to be overly complex and difficult. When the science needed for an ecosystem approach to fisheries is perceived this way, science products cannot keep pace with fisheries critics, thus encouraging partisan political interference in fisheries management and proliferation of “faith-based solutions. In this paper we argue that one way to effectively counter politicization of fisheries decision-making is to ensure that new ecosystem-based approaches in fisheries are viewed only as an emergent property of innovation in science and policy. We organize our essay using three major themes to focus the discussion: empirical, jurisdictional, and societal challenges. We undertake at least partial answers to the following questions: (1) has conventional fisheries management really failed?; (2) can short-comings in conventional fisheries management be augmented with new tools, such as allocation of rights?; (3) is the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) equivalent to Ecosystem-Based Management?; and (4) is restoration of degraded ecosystems a necessary component of an EAF

Biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys

This paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present,and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s. Working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects,we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems. The legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production. In the 1970-80s, promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed. Where the territorial and scalar vision was breached, it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher-value biofuel to the North rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today. However, controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions, and to their local impacts becoming more widely known. South/South and North/North trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities. As assumptions of a food-versus-fuel conflict have come to be challenged, legitimacy questions over global agri-business and trade are spotlighted even further. In this context, visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising. These include large-scale biomass-for-fuel models in Europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global South to compete, and smallscale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the South