Publications | Umweltbundesamt

Chemicals

Standardisation of release factors for the exposure assessment under REACH Developments since 2010

Under the European Chemicals legislation ⁠REACH⁠ the release of a substance into the environment is estimated on the basis of emission factors. For this purpose industry can deduce realistic emission factors by developing specific Environmental Release Categories (spERCs) and documenting them in a corresponding fact sheet. The current project builds up on an earlier assessment conduc...read more

Chemicals

Assessment of Impacts of a European Register of Products Containing Nanomaterials

The implementation of a nanoproduct register as an instrument to increase the transparency on the use of nanomaterials in the EU and to ensure the regulatory oversight on nanomaterials has been discussed for quite a time. Reasons to implement a register are the uncertainties concerning the evaluation of the possible risks of nanomaterials for human health and the environment and the lack of knowle...read more

Economy | Consumption

Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Costs, Annex B

Annex B: Best-practice Cost Rates for Air Pollutants, Transport, Power Generation and Heat Generation

Annex B to the Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Damage contains UBA’s recommendations for best-practice cost rates for greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants and, based on this, estimates of the environmental costs of transport and of power and heat generation. The recommendations are based in large part on results of the research project “Estimation of Environment...read more

Economy | Consumption

Environmental costs in the energy and transport sectors – Recommendations by the Federal Environment Agency

The background paper presents an overview of key contents of the Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Costs and its annexes. The Methodological Convention 2.0 of the Federal Environment Agency summarises current scientific knowledge in this field, presents recommendations for best-practice cost rates and makes transparent the underlying assumptions and normative judgments....read more

Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

Towards Sustainable Development Goals: Working Paper

This report first describes the two processes for the development of SDGs and the post-2015 development agenda, and the options to integrate the results of both processes in order to arrive at one set of goals. It goes on to discuss the possible structure of a set of SDGs, and discusses a number of topic clusters, as an illustration of what possible SDGs could look like.read more

Chemicals

Georeferenced Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Pesticides

Further Advances in Assessing the Risk to Aquatic Ecosystems by Spray Drift from Permanent Crops

The current exposure assessment for pesticide entries into water bodies considers a water body model which represents a realistic worst case for water bodies in the agricultural landscape. For the factors determining the pesticide exposure in the model a variety of deterministic assumptions are made such as that it is a stagnant water body of a default depth of 30 cm which is directly situated in...read more

Air, Soil | Land

Air Quality and the Nitrogen Cycle

Factsheet

Nitrogen emissions in the form of nitrogen oxides (NOX) or ammonia (NH3) contribute to the formation of groundlevel ozone and secondary fine particulates, which, together with nitrogen dioxide, are major air pollutants with significant impacts on human health. In addition, ammonia and ground-level ozone cause damage to crops and natural ecosystems. Excess reactive nitrogen lost to the environment...read more