Pollution // Current

Mapping Noise Pollution with Cell Phones

Cell phones usually contribute to urban noise pollution. But the folks at Paris’s... more

brandonthebuck
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6 hours ago
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1 comment

First Do No Harm - Connecting the Dots Between The Environment and Health Care Reform

Making the case for why environmentalism and health care are mutually supportive... more

jdecock
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9 hours ago
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Report details "coal's assault on human health"

Coal is not now and never will be clean. It kills.

JanforGore
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1 day ago
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Obama/EPA censors "experts" on Cap-and-Trade

Watch the video. Do these sound like "deniers"? if you can't find the video... more

plusaf
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3 days ago
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3 comments

Non-Recyclable Disposable Single Cup Coffee Packaging. The K-Cup.

I'm starting to see these little empty non-recyclable, non-biodegradable... more

ninthstate
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4 days ago
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5 comments

Plastic Chemicals Feminize Boys

Chemicals in plastics alter the brains of baby boys making them "more feminine", say... more

Progresshiv
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5 days ago
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4 comments

See the immense area destroyed by a nuclear firestorm

BOOM. http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearexplosionsimulator/... more

remanns
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7 days ago
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8 comments

The Weekly Carboholic: independent statisticians reject global cooling claims in blind analysis

Climate disruption deniers have been claiming for years now that the global... more

angliss
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9 days ago
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It's time to wake up

The Copenhagen summit on climate change, expected in December, would be a historic... more

hyperion74
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9 days ago
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'Toxic' US ship banned in India

India has blocked entry to a former US naval ship heading for break-up at a scrap yard... more

cutee_leslie
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11 days ago
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Justicia Now: Saving the Amazon

JanforGore
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17 days ago
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4 comments

Shocking Photos From the Pacific Trash Gyre

Chris Jordan's unaltered photos from the Midway island speak volumes about the size... more

Lurkistan
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17 days ago
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Sea slime killing U.S. seabirds

Hundreds of birds—including this loon pictured on the Oregon coast—are washing up... more

JanforGore
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18 days ago
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THE rickshaw driver pulls in to the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from torrential rain. There, under a shop's awning, a small crowd is waiting for the weather to break. The group includes Sapna Sharma and her brother-in-law, Sanjay. Sanjay is holding his 18-month-old nephew, Anshul, who has kohl-rimmed eyes and silver bracelets on his ankles.

As we stand talking, some of the people start pointing to the child's hands and feet while speaking animatedly to us in Hindi, and then Sapna explains through our translator that her son was born with 12 toes and 12 fingers.

Shortly afterwards, about a kilometre away in the Shankar Nagar area of Bhopal, we meet another Indian child with congenital malformations, three-year-old Raj, who is visually impaired, cannot walk and whose head is oversized. ''The doctors said bad water could have been a cause of my son's condition. Older people here are gas victims and now the younger people are victims of the water,'' his mother, Poona Bai, says.

Here, in the city of Bhopal, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of children are being born with deformities and mental health problems. As we walk back to our rickshaw, we come across more afflicted youngsters who have followed us along the road. They include 12-year-old Rajesh, who is barefoot and bald. The other children make fun of him as his mother, Yashdabai, explains that they do so because they believe he is mad. Rajesh's older sister, Sonia, scolds the other children and says she has to protect her brother from bullies. Sonia is barefoot, too, and as she speaks a colleague notices that the young girl has huge feet.

This is the horrendous legacy Bhopal is facing 25 years on from the world's worst industrial accident. The Bhopal gas disaster, as it became known, has been dubbed the ''Hiroshima of the chemical industry''. It happened shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, when a cloud of poisonous gas escaped from a Union Carbide pesticide plant. The release of 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (known as MIC) from the factory exposed more than 500,000 people to toxic gas. Up to 10,000 are thought to have died within the first 72 hours after the leak.

At least 25,000 people exposed to the gas have since died, and today in Bhopal tens of thousands more Indians suffer from a variety of debilitating gas-related illnesses such as respiratory and psychiatric problems, joint pains, menstrual irregularities, tuberculosis and cancers. Then there is the escalating number of birth defects, including cleft palates, webbed feet and hands, twisted limbs, brain damage and heart problems.

Shankar Nagar is a slum area of the city, just north of the derelict Union Carbide factory. For years local campaigners have been demanding that Union Carbide, now owned by US multinational Dow Chemicals, clean up the abandoned pesticide plant, but so far their pleas have been ignored.

In 1999, a Greenpeace investigation found severe chemical contamination of the environment surrounding the former factory, which, the NGO said, was polluted with heavy metals and chemical compounds.

The report said: ''Analysis of water samples drawn from wells serving the local community has also confirmed the contamination of groundwater reserves with chemicals arising either from previous or ongoing activities and/or incidents. As a result of the ubiquitous presence of contaminants, the exposure of the communities surrounding the plants to complex mixtures of hazardous chemicals continues on a daily basis.

''Though less acute than the exposure that took place as a result of the 1984 MIC release, long-term chronic exposure to mixtures of toxic synthetic chemicals and heavy metals is also likely to have serious consequences for the health and survival of the local population.''

The Greenpeace study was backed in 2004 by Amnesty International, whose Clouds of Injustice report said, ''toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and water supply … and it is appalling that no one has been held
accountable.THE rickshaw driver pulls in to the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from... more