India to study impact of bad environment on health

India will conduct its first study on impact of environment on health even though monitoring on air and water pollution is inadequate.

Updated on: Jun 10, 2011, 19:34:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India will conduct its first study on impact of environment on health even though monitoring on air and water pollution is inadequate.

The Environment ministry has decided to conduct such a study but has failed to implement its mandate for the 11th five year plan.

As per the plan, India was to have at least 1,000 air monitoring covering 500 cities and 2,000 water quality monitoring stations by end of 2012.

Till now, India has 461 air monitoring covering 115 cites and 1,359 water monitoring stations and there has been no capacity addition to monitor pollutants, which impact health the most such as particulate matter (PM) of 2.5 microns, ozone, mercury, benzene and organic compounds.

“Monitoring of these pollutants should be extended to at lease 76 cities,” the Planning Commission said, in the 11th five year plan document. S P Gautam, chairperson of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), admitted that they will not be able to meet the target citing shortage of funds.

The CPCB existing pollution monitoring mechanism is also in dire straits with its cost increasing to around Rs 30 crore, which is about 75 % of the pollution watchdog’s entire budget. “There has been no increase in our budget in the last two years although the work has increased,” an official said.

Its impact is that India comprehensively monitors only four basic pollutants --- Sulphur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Suspended Particular Matter and Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter --- with emerging health threats such as PM 2.5 being ignored. Quality of air in 70 % of Indian cities is worse than the World Health Organisation’s air quality level for good health.

In case of water, India monitors few places on 200 rivers, 60 lakes, three ponds, 13 canals, 20 drains and 500 wells. “It is less than five percent of water bodies we have,” Planning Commission member in-charge of water, Mihir Shah said recently.

The level of water pollution can also be gauged from the fact that India has capacity to treat just 20 % of the sewage generated. Of this, 40 % is in Delhi alone. “Our water bodies are among dirtiest in the world,” Environment minister Jairam Ramesh admitted recently.

Countries such as United States and Europe monitor over 15-25 types of air pollutants and almost all river and lakes.

On Friday, the ministry decided that Indian Council for Medical Research and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) will do research on environment impact on health of Indians. “We are also required to build capacity to create awareness about health impacts of all types of pollution including climate change,” said K Srinath Reddy, chairperson of PHFI. A formal Memorandum of Understanding is expected to be signed for the joint research with the ministry later this month.

Ramesh said the study was important as there is very little research in India on health impacts of pollution and it has hampered to a policy to deal with emerging health threats from bad environment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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