Mercury — considered highly toxic but used extensively in healthcare products, lighting and for religious purposes — will be phased out in India in the next six to 10 years.
Mercury — considered highly toxic but used extensively in healthcare products, lighting and for religious purposes — will be phased out in India in the next six to 10 years.
In its first major pro-environment move, the government has decided to sign the Minamata Convention, a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury.
Environment minister Prakash Javadekar told HT a formal announcement would be made at an event organised by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon in September in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is participating in the UNGA.
“The decision shows our commitment to grow in a clean way without jeopardising growth,” the minister said.
Mercury, also known as quick silver, has some 3,000 industrial applications in India and can be found in thermometers and other healthcare products, paints, cosmetics, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), electrical switches and fertilisers.
The country produces 10-15 million clinical instruments every year on average, including clinical and lab thermometers as well as blood pressure monitors.
Mercury is used in traditional ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, though mercury poisoning can result in impaired neurological development in infants and children, according to the US Environment Protection Agency.
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The chemical is also used in the construction of shivlings. “Our studies show that ayurvedic medicines and the milk poured over these shivlings, which is then consumed by devotees, are very toxic,” said Ravi Aggarwal of Toxic Link, a Delhi-based advocacy group.
Its studies had a few years ago pushed the Delhi and central governments to announce its intent of making hospitals mercury-free. “For the majority of states, though, it is still a long way to go,” Aggarwal said, while welcoming the government’s decision to sign the treaty.
The Minamata Convention — named after the site of an industrial disaster in Japan in the 1950s, where mercury poured into a river poisoned thousands — calls for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired thermal power plants, the source of 65% of India’s power generation. It also seeks to reduce mercury content in CFLs to 5 milligrams from the present 15.
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When India signs the treaty, which provides financial incentives to the developing world to phase out mercury, it will join a club of over 100 countries to do so.
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When India signs the treaty, which provides financial incentives to the developing world to phase out mercury, it will join a club of over 100 countries to do so.
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Besides the environmental benefits, the government — accused of going easy on green norms — expects this move to resurrect its image as one that strikes a balance between growth and environment.
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.
