BOGOTA - Colombia will not import toxic or nuclear waste, according to a resolution by the Environment Ministry.

Environment chief Juan Lozano said the measure adopted July 21 "confirms that Colombia will not be able to import any type of dangerous waste, unless there is assurance of an industrial treatment process that mitigates all threat to the life and health of Colombians."

Ecologist Carlos Escobar, adviser to the Environmental Corporation of the Atlantic, said in a Tierramérica interview that the measure will help resolve a problem whose true scope has not yet been realized.

Citing the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and reports from the Attorney General, Escobar said that in Colombia there are at least 5,400 tons of toxic waste buried or poorly stored -- equivalent to nearly half the total for all of Latin America.

MEXICO CITY - The international environmental watchdog Greenpeace has asked Mexico's health authorities to respond to the contamination of marine fauna that poses a threat for human consumption.

Alejandro Olivera, coordinator of Greenpeace-Mexico's ocean campaign, told Tierramérica that the appeal aims to expand the studies to include a wide range of contaminants, not just focused on fecal matter as they are currently.

He explained that based on studies by 37 Mexican scientists, many of them from the Autonomous National University of Mexico, it was discovered that several marine species present contamination from zinc, cadmium, lead and mercury, as well as from pesticides, salmonella and cholera.

In response, Environment Minister José Luis Luege Tamargo asked Greenpeace to provide proof to the Ministry of Health so that necessary action could be taken.

BUENOS AIRES - Argentine environmentalists have proposed that the countries of Mercosur (Southern Common Market) take a regional focus for drafting policies that involve their shared natural resources.

For the first time, a forum of civil society organizations met in parallel to the Mercosur Summit, held July 20-21 in the central Argentine city of Córdoba. The trade bloc is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

"The environment does not understand borders. Natural resources are shared and so is responsibility for their management," Cecilia Iglesias, an activist with the Environmental Network, told Tierramérica.

The Network and other environmental groups participating in the parallel forum also called for regulating the activities of highly contaminating industries, harmonizing environmental protection standards amongst the Mercosur members, and ensuring access to public information on related issues.

GUATEMALA CITY - Five-hundred hectares of mangroves are destroyed each year in Guatemala, which could devastate 40 percent of the country's mangrove ecosystems, says Carlos Albacete, of the organization Trópico Verde (Green Tropics).

The environmentalist explained to Tierramérica that Guatemala's mangroves have suffered grave alterations since the mid-1950s. "First it was farming, then livestock, and later the shrimp, salt and tourism industries that caused the damage."

Due to the deterioration, in 2001 the National Council for Protected Areas placed all mangrove species on the list of endangered flora.

According to official figures, there are 16,000 hectares of mangrove forests in Guatemala, but Trópico Verde calculates the total to be 12,000 hectares.

SAO PAULO - A study conducted by University of Sao Paulo's Ribeirao Preto science department has certified the anti-inflammatory properties of the copaíba plant (Copaifera officinalis).

In testing on mice, this tree native to the tropical regions of Latin America and Western Africa presented anti-inflammation properties twice as strong as diclofenac sodium, a synthetic medication.

This was manifest because "with a lower dose, we achieved the same anti-inflammatory effect," Mónica Freiman Ramos, head of the investigation, explained to Tierramérica. She believes that after conducting toxicology and clinical trials in humans, alongside the pharmaceutical industry, the availability of the product on the market may not be far away.

To date, copaíba has been used in scents and varnishes, but traditional medicine has used it to prevent scarring and as an anti-inflammatory.