Australia substantiation

Worldwide the food situation is worsening. Only five nations (Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, and the United States) export substantial quantities of grains. Further, during recent years grain deficits have escalated in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (5),... 

In 1998, the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Act 1998 came into force. Manufacturers making unqualified statements about country of origin, such as Made in. .. must be able to demonstrate substantial transformation and exceed a 50% production costs threshold. They, therefore, tend to use qualified claims, such as Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients, to ensure that labels are not misleading or deceptive. 

Finally, surfactants have also been used to reduce water evaporation from open reservoirs in arid areas, especially in Australia. The packed insoluble monolayer adsorbed at the air/water interface substantially reduces the transfer of water vapour to the atmosphere. Cetylalcohol is used at the rate of 1 ounce per acre per day for this reason. It has been calculated that this procedure can save up to one million gallons per acre per year. 

A similar observation has been made in other countries where exhaust controls have been instituted. For example, vehicle emissions measurements made by remote sensing in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, showed that 1995 model years emitted 75% less CO, 70% less hydrocarbons, and 65% less NO compared to the pre-1991 vehicles without emission controls (Bishop et al., 1997). In Australia, emissions for pre-1986 vehicles were substantially larger than those from newer, catalyst-equipped cars, a factor of 4 for hydrocarbons, 2.5 for CO, and 2 for NO in addition, the reactivity (see Section 16.B) of the exhaust emissions... 

It must be noted though that a direct comparison of the 1998 and the 2001 household survey data in Australia could be potentially misleading as the underlying methodology for the surveys changed quite substantially during this period. 

The problems experienced in Australia have been effectively buffered in the world market by a broad, diverse market base. A substantial proportion of world production is used in other areas of the chemical processing industry (as shown in Section 2.3.3), thereby establishing a more stable base. 

The interdependency of environmental processes is diverse and has been experimentally studied spatiotemporally, though only a small fraction of processes have been studied. Analysis of satellite data shows that in recent years natural processes have changed substantially due to urbanization. Indeed, cities are one of the most important and vivid phenomena of civilization. From 1970 to 2004, the size of world urban population increased from 35% to 50.1%. The contribution of developing countries to this increase was about 90%. On the whole, the level of urbanization in the early 21st century was North America 77.2%, Latin America 75.3%, Europe 74.8%, Oceania and Australia 70.2%, Africa 37.9%, and Asia 36.7%. In 2004, 3.3 billion people lived in cities. 

In Australia, the most extensive set of data involves 4640 blood samples analysed for OCPs at the New South Wales Workcare Authority from 1987 to 1989. The vast majority of samples contained less than the occupational limits 50ppb (pg L-1) of dieldrin and less than 20ppb (pg L-1) of heptachlor. Of the 49 samples above the occupational limit 44 of these were from pest control operators (NHMRC, 1992). An earlier NSW study by Siyali (1972) compared whole blood levels of organochlorine insecticides from persons with and without industrial pesticide exposure. Levels of HCB, total DDT, dieldrin and HCH (BHC) were substantially higher in the exposed group, particularly for dieldrin. 

A useful indication of the long-term changes in organochlorine pesticide residues in human milk is obtained from a summary of Western Australia levels from 1974 to 1991, as presented by Stevens et al. (1993) in Table 17.2. The results indicate that mean DDT and dieldrin levels have fallen to 20% or less of 1974 values with substantial decreases occurring between 1982 and 1990. HCB levels fell rapidly in the mid-1970s to 1980. 

Hazardous pesticides associated with global cotton production represent a substantial threat to global freshwater resources. Hazardous cotton pesticides are now known to contaminate rivers in USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Australia, Greece and West Africa. In Brazil, the world s 4th largest consumer of agrochemicals, researchers tested rainwater for the presence of pesticides. 19 different chemicals were identified of which 12 were applied to cotton within the study area. 

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