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The aim of this article is to show difficulties arising when courts judge the negligence of dog owners in absence of precise legislation and typical precedents. We analyze the elements of a crime in two cases where children were objects of canine aggression, and show how the courts constructed the issue of dog owners’ negligence. In Case 1 the Court of Appeal found that a foster parent was not negligent when leaving a boy with specific needs alone with a heavily built dog that then repeatedly bit the boy to death despite the owners attempt to pull away the dog. The court also ignored the signs of substandard animal husbandry including previous severe incidents where the dog owner also was injured. In Case 2, the Court of Appeal instead found that the breed of the dog also matter, and that not even adult presence is enough to protect a child from dog attack. Because both the child and the dog could behave unpredictably, continuous observation and supervision was required. In both cases, measures to prevent the incident were available and would have been easy to carry out.

A major part of residues from pulp industry are deposited as waste at high disposal costs. Thispaper summarizes a five-year research project concerning implementation of an industrial,automatic roll-pelletizing method at a heating plant in the city of Kalmar, Sweden and presentsthe visions of the newly initiated research project where pulp industry residues are recycledtogether with wood ash. Also combustion issues are included.

The inspection protocols of the Swedish police, based on the Act (2007:1150) on Supervision of Dogs and Cats, were used to examine the characteristics of 101 seized dogs, their owners, and the circumstances in which the attacks occurred. Most common reasons to seize a dog was that the dog owner was not following a previous order or ban, or that the dog had attacked and caused damage to humans or animals. The most common circumstances of the attacks involved dogs that escaped from gardens, unleashed dogs on walks and attacks by dogs on a leash. Bull breeds caused the highest number of injuries, the most serious injuries, and they were most often categorized as high risk, followed by Rottweilers and German Shepherds. Affenpinscher, Chihuahua, Cocker Spaniel, Japanese Spitz, Pug, Shih Tzu, Shetland Sheepdog and Golden Retriever were identified as victim breeds. The seized dogs had caused substantial harm to humans, animals, and their environment. The largest proportion of dogs returned to owners occurred in the Stockholm region.

Sustainable whole-tree harvesting practice requires that nutrient removal from the forest is compensated. Wood ashes contain all the nutrients, except for nitrogen, that are found in unburned fuel and can also increase soil pH, which makes ash recycling a natural way to stabilize the nutrient balance and counteract the acidification of forest soils that occurs due to intensive forest management. Several methods for processing ashes into spreadable products have been developed. The aim of this paper is to compare these methods. The study mainly focused on an economic evaluation of production, transportation and the spreading of self-hardened ash, ash pellets and ash granules. Self-hardened ash is generally considered to be the cheapest alternative to manufactured ash products, but these results imply that the most cost effective alternative is ash pellets. Around 27% of total costs could be earned from recycling the ash by producing pellets and 8% if granules are produced instead of self-hardened ash. This partly depends on the higher density of the pellets and granules and a significant reduction in the number of transportation operations. The reduction in transportation operations and diesel consumption also has major environmental benefits. Furthermore, it is more efficient to produce granules and pellets than it is to produce self-hardened ash and it is also easier to produce a reliable product of an appropriate size, shape and texture for a market that has well defined requirements.

Companies that generate a large amount of wood ash will need an industrial process to agglomerate the ash and lower its reactivity, because untreated ash is a dust hazard for workers and is difficu ...

Recycling of wood ash is based on the presumption that moderate concentrations of environmentally harmful elements are a part of the nutrient cycle and do not increase in net concentrations in the forest soil. It is assumed that the same quantities of harmful elements are harvested from the forest and recycled back. This principle does not apply to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) since these pollutants are formed during the combustion process, especially when the combustion performance is poor. Additionally, industrial combustors are adjusted in order to reduce NOx-emissions, indirectly causing formation of PAHs. This study examined fly ash from combustion of pulverized wood for its elemental and PAH concentrations during a period of 9 weeks. The 16 EPA-PAH concentrations range between 40 and 300 mg kg−1. Re-burning of the ash reduces the PAH concentrations to 0.24 mg kg−1 and organic carbon concentration from 40% to 5%, enhancing its composition significantly. It is important to determine the amount and fate of PAHs spread on forest soils with wood ash to ensure the improvement of the health of the forest ecosystem. Maximized energy efficiency of industrial boilers is the key to reducing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and enabling a sustainable nutrient recycling system.

Limestone and dolomite powder were tested as binders during wood ash agglomeration on an industrial and a laboratory scale. Two agglomeration methods are compared. Dolomite from Estonia is commonly used as a binder/additive during automatic production of agglomerated wood ash at the central heating plant of Kalmar, Sweden. Swedish limestones from Oland and Ignaberga as well as Swedish dolomite from Glanshammar were used as binders in the production of test agglomerates of wood ash. The chemical and mineralogical composition of the binders as well as of the resulting granules and pellets is presented. The structural, chemical and leaching properties of the hardened ash/binder agglomerates are discussed in relation to their possible environmental impact on forest soil. The environmental acceptance of recycling of agglomerated ashes to forest soils is also discussed in relation to the new recommendations.