Grass could be used to produce biofuels. The advantage of using grass crops is that they can be grown in marginal lands that would otherwise not be used .

Patients affected by a bacterial infection can usually be treated with an antibiotic. But sometimes a resistant bacterial strain is causing the infection .

Drinking water flowing from your tap can contain harmful bacteria, viruses and single-cell animals. And most countries do not routinely test for all these bugs.

Urban mining is increasingly being taken seriously by industry because it gives access to materials—such as expensive metals used in electronics—that are buried in waste tips and landfills.

What happens to research findings once the researchers have gone away? A web site run from the University of Stuttgart in Germany offers scientists an opportunity to bring their own data from completed research project on environmental and health risks and contribute to an Integrated Environmental Health Impact Assessment System, dubbed IEHIAS .

Twenty five years ago, the German chemist Michael Braungart developed a new approach to recycling, now called "Cradle to Cradle" or "C2C" after the book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which he and the American architect William McDonough published in 2002.

The life that inhabits the world’s oceans has almost infinite variety. It remains an untapped source of diversity.

In Europe, irrigated agriculture is the chief water consumer for food production. Yet water resources are in limited supply.  One way out of this problem is to take more care with the water we use , and reduce the estimated 60% water waste.

Water is one of humanity’s most pressing issues. Do we have enough of it for drinking, for farming or for industry? Too much, in the shape of flooding? Or too little, in the form of drought? The WATCH project, funded by the EU, was designed to give us better answers to questions of water management .

Eating fruit or having a glass of red wine is seen as offering health benefits. The benefits are often pinned on polyphenols, natural chemicals —found in foods—referred to as flavonoids and phenolic acids, but also fragments of food proteins called peptides.

Might it be possible to make better plants more quickly than we do today? And without the public objection that accompanies genetic manipulation? Climate change means that this is now an urgent question.

Tyres are well suited for recycling. They are easy to collect and do not require any costly sorting process.  However, in Europe, still only about 50% of the tyres are recycled .

Silver has been used as biocide for medical purposes since the 1930s. Today nanometric size silver particles are used to prevent unpleasant odour caused by bacteria in sport shirts or socks .

Peanut, egg and soy are more common food known to trigger an allergic reaction, a problem affecting around 8% of children in the EU. Intuitively, you might not list apples as causing allergic reactions.

People living in Arctic areas can be more sensitive to pollutants due to their genetics , says researcher Arja Rautio at the Centre for Arctic Medicine in the University of Oulu , Finland.

If you can't kill them, trap them. Such is the fate that scientists are reserving to pathogenic bacteria, such as the infamous E. coli .

Several hundred thousands of Europeans are affected by food borne diseases every year . Only a shift in perception of how food safety should be achieved could help avoid these illnesses.

Sea bass or sea bream, by far the most consumed fish species around the Mediterranean area, increasingly originate from aquaculture.

We can blame all sorts of things on the weather. But a stomach bug?  It seems unlikely. Yet, scientists say greater quantities of rainfall and bigger storms will lead to more stomach upsets in parts of Europe.

Only about 50% of every fish sold as fillet is actually eaten.  Often, fish heads, viscera, skin and bones are discarded.