Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Akhilesh Kumar Vs State of Uttar Pradesh & Others dated 23/05/2025. The matter related to illegal mining activites carried out by Jai Maa Chandrika Enterprises, Rajendra Nagar, village Kabari, district Mahoba, Uttar Pradesh. The applicant also alleged about illegal sale …
SOS: AIDs, a play being staged in Bombay by Spotlight, a group of concerned theatre professionals, gets across the " .. message: AIDS IS not Just a disease that happens to someone else. It can happen to you. And as there is no cure, it is pretty obvious that vigilance …
In the last 2 decades India has seen 2 major exoduses triggered by health catastrophes: the first, after the Bhopal gas leak in 1984; and Surat's plague-scare exodus exactly 10 years later. But were the risks as great as the rumours which induced the panic? Perception of a risk is …
Electric cars, long promoted as a way to reduce vehicular smog, could create additional environmental problems because of the lead- based batteries that power them, say researchers of Carnegie Millon University in Pittsberg, US. Emissions from mining, smelting and recycling of lead pose serious threat to public health. According to …
ON THE eve of World Health Day, 4 infants died hours after being inoculated against measles at government pri- mary health centres, acutely embarrassing a government anxious to fulfil its (ill-defined) objective of "Health for all by 2000 AD". In the first incident, 9-month-old Soma and I 1-month-old Bandana and …
MARK Harrison's book is a tale of the trials and tribulations of the Raj on the battlefield of disease and medicine. The colonial government's political strength hinged on the wellbeing of its troops. Hence, its interest in public health - soldiers cannot be kept in perpetual quarantine. Harrison's book takes …
THE mysteries surrounding the GaVf War Syndrome (Down To Earth, Vol 3, No 15) may finally be laid to rest. The Pentagon has confirmed that the symptoms associated with the syndrome, like birth defects, memory loss and joint pain, may have been caused by the precautionary medicines given to allied …
DESPITE its eminent contributors, publisher and volume, Reaching India's Poor seems to be only rationalising the diminishing role of the state in the public health sector. The introduction says that government programmes have been to unable to reach the poor while the nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have successfully addressed their problems. …
In 1961, this promise came with the Union Carbide Corp (UCC) visiting card. The small print added -- A hand in things to come. On December 3, 1984, UCC showed its hand. Thousands died and continue to die in well-documented agony and tens of thousands were maimed and traumatised for …
THE residents of Kardampuri colony in East Delhi woke up to a noxious nightmare in the wee hours of November 13. Toxic fumes from a heap set afire by a local junk dealer sent them scurrying out of their beds. The panicky exodus of reeling men, women and children put …
A simple, selective and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method has been developed for the measurement of josamycin residues in four porcine tissues (i.e., muscle, liver, kidney and fat). The sample preparation consisted of a homogenization step in an acetonitrile
Voluntary organisations and activists campaigning against the use of tobacco received a massive boost during the 16th International Cancer Congress held in Delhi last fortnight. The Congress focused on tobacco-related hazards and several papers presented at the occasion pointed out that the economic burden of tobacco-related diseases far outweigh the …
The development and application of two methods for determining bromate in bread are described. A gas chromatographic (GC) method which relied on the formation of a volatile derivative of bromate gave a detection limit of 12 μg/kg. Duplicate analyses agreed well but recovery from breads spiked with bromate were low …
Lead-free petrol, which the ministry of environment :nd forests (MEF) is All: seeking to introduce in W, the 4 major metrop titan cities by April 1, 1995, is hazardous to health, says H B Mathur, professor,of mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. An expert on automobile pollution, …
ON MARCH 3, Navita Singh, senior sub-judge of Haryana's Kaithal district, created a precedent when she passed a permanent injunction restraining the working of one of Kaithal's 350 odd punjawas -- outdated brick kilns using coal dust that, resembling a hillock, have no chimneys that distinguish "modern" brick kilns. Singh's …
RETIRED police officer Tarif Singh and his friends in North Delhi's Siraspur village heaved a sigh of relief as the last of the 23 clandestine lead-smelting units closed shop in their neighbourhood on May 7. "Many of my neighbours had serious breathing trouble because of the smoke," Singh says. Many …
INDIA has become a dumping ground of lead battery waste. Almost all the batteries at Siraspur and Mundka have foreign markings. According to the international environmental NGO, Greenpeace, about 346,000 kg of lead battery waste from Australia alone was brought into the country between January and September, 1993. Of late …
SCIENCE appears to have finally found the elusive cure for baldness. Proscar, a drug manufactured by Merck & Co to treat enlarged prostate glands, has an interesting side-effect: in low doses, it increases hair growth. In clinical trials carried out on 200 young men at an early stage of baldness, …
FOR the past 10 years, over 12,000 inhabitants of Meethapur village on Delhi's Badarpur border have been racked with cough and breathing problems that often degenerate into asthma and tuberculosis. The Batra Hospital & Medical Research Centre (BHMRC) -- which caters to Meethapur in the absence of closer medicare centres …
IT NEEDS little imagination to realise that a degraded environment undermines human health. But the linkage between a deteriorating environment, economy and increased health vulnerability needs to be seriously examined. Of still greater importance is the necessity to integrate health interventions with local needs to reverse the downward spiral. The …
The presidents of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, along with the Russian deputy prime minister have agreed to set up a joint fund to save what was once the world's fourth-largest freshwater lake. The use of water for irrigating rice and cotton has greatly depleted the Aral Sea, which …
