The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Greenpeace is waging a campaign to stop brominated flame retardants (BFRs) being used in electronic equipment and is facing opposition from the Bromine Science Environmental Foundation (BSEF) - a BFR manufacturers' lobby group. The discovery of high concentrations of the chemicals in Tasmanian devils will add considerable weight to the Greenpeace campaign.
The devil population is threatened with extinction from a facial tumour disease, cause presently unknown, and the paper said no link had been found between this and the BFR contamination but it reported the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network co-ordinator Mariann Lloyd-Smith saying the findings added weight to a global push to ban flame retardants, some of which have been linked to reproductive disorders and cancers in animals and humans."
According to The Australian, analysis of devil fat samples by the National Measurement Institute found what it described as high levels of hexabromobiphenyl (BB153) and "reasonably high" levels of decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE209). It has been argued that this form of flame retardant was safe to replace others because it did not bioaccumulate.
According to BSEF, "Deca-BDE is used to protect the plastic components of electronic devices from the risks of fire. Deca-BDE has also been thoroughly evaluated under an EU risk assessment, which concluded that it did not present any risk to human health or to the environment under current conditions of manufacturing and use."
Deca-BDE appears to be identical to the BDE209 found in the Tasmanian devils. According to Wikipedia "Commercial decaBDE is a technical mixture of different PBDE congeners, with PBDE congener number 209 (decabromodiphenyl ether) and nonabromodiphenyl ether being the most common. The term decaBDE alone refers to only decabromodiphenyl ether, the single 'fully brominated' PBDE."
Dr Lloyd-Smith was quoted saying: "We are surprised at these levels of this product being found in an animal that lives in remote and reasonably pristine areas. It certainly highlights the dangers of these sorts of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and the fact that they can travel vast distances (via the atmosphere). They are significant developmental and reproductive toxins and have been related to a range of nasty issues in animal and human health...Of particular concern would be women of child-bearing age or pregnant women. They (PBDEs) can impact on the immune system. They can affect the way the brain develops, the way we think and feel."
David Bass
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