Chemical Pollution

Reviews of some of the movies screened -

“Be water, My friend”

This UNESCO funded film, “Be water, My friend” tracks the research of Professor Gordon Lightgoot, an expert on ancient water monuments as he tries to understand and rectify the alarming drying up of Karez’s in northern Iragi region of Kurdistan.

This document is an educational booklet on water management, published by Utthan, which works towards empowering women's groups to seek clean and adequate quality of water for all. 

The booklet provides background information on water as an important natural resource and the importance of protecting and maintaining the quality and quantity of this natural resource.

The details have been explained in a manner that is simple and understandable and include illustrations that are self explanatory and easy to follow.

The booklet is divided into the following sections:

A Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) is a very useful tool to capture the health dimensions of the environment including air, water and land. The CEPI is intended to act as an early warning tool and can help in categorising the industrial clusters/areas in terms of priority of planning needs for interventions.

This report by the Central Pollution and Control Board (CPCB) presents the results of the application of the CEPI to selected industrial clusters or areas.

The main objective of the study was to identify polluted industrial clusters or areas in order to take concerted action and to centrally monitor them at the national level. This was in order to improve the current status of environmental components such as air and water quality data, ecological damage, and visual environmental conditions.

Our publication is coming up with the annual "Case Study Special Issue” in Sept. 2010. Its a collector’s issue, where we are covering leading industries across the globe.

This document by the Department of Environment, Government of Tamil Nadu highlights the importance of the Kodaikanal lake as an important tourist destination and warns that this freshwater lake is under the threat of getting polluted and its biodiversity endangered.

The document presents the findings of the study that aimed at assessing the physico-chemical and biological quality of the Kodaikanal lake.

Evidence indicates that unrestricted tourism activities have led to high use of plastic bottles, glass bottles, plastic bags, causing high levels of pollution and silting of the lake. Damaged fibreglass boats left inside the lakes also pose a serious threat to the lake ecosystem.

Dr. G. D. Agrawal Scientist and Rishi

Meeting Dr. G. D. Agrawal in his spartan, two room cottage in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh, you would never guess what an accomplished and distinguished scientist he is – first Member-Secretary of the Government of India’s Central Pollution Control Board, former Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at IIT Kanpur and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. The list goes on and on.

Yet this eminent professional sweeps his own floors, washes his own clothes and cooks his own meals. He retains only a few possessions and dresses in homespun khadi. At the age of 76, his main mode of transport within Chitrakoot is a bicycle and when he travels further afield, he goes by ordinary bus and second-class train. These are the deliberate choices of a devout Hindu whose deepest values are for simplicity and reverence for nature. Dr G.D. Agrawal is the doyen of environmental engineering professionals in India. Well past retirement, he continues to teach and inspire students as an Honorary Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya, in Chitrakoot (M.P.).

The report deals with the transportation behavior of lindane, a pesticide used commonly in the agricultural and public health sectors in India, through sandy and loamy soils. The contamination of groundwater by pesticides is a worldwide problem because of their tissue degradation and carcinogenic nature. They are bio-accumulative and relatively stable and therefore, require close monitoring.

The pesticides used for agricultural, forestry and domestic activities leach into the groundwater and therefore, it is very important to study their transportation behavior in different types of soil media.

The report attempts to do a trace analysis of pesticides using gas chromatography technique. Pesticides are bio-accumulative and relatively stable, as well as toxic or carcinogenic, and therefore, require close monitoring. The identification and quantification of pesticides in different water bodies is a very important part of water analysis. The gas chromatography technique is considered appropriate, as most of the pesticides are volatile at the working temperature of gas chromatography. However, a pre-derivatization of a very few pesticides may be required prior to the analysis.

The study attempts to compile and evaluate the status of metal pollution assessment through aquatic sediments in rivers and lakes. The introduction of metallic pollutants into a river, whether it is natural (erosion from its drainage basin) or artificial (anthropogenic), can occur in dissolved or particulate form.