Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item Titled "Neglected Katora Houz in Hyderabad’s Golconda Fort Cries for attention appearing in ‘The Siasat Daily’ dated 25 May 2025". The application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled “Neglected Katora Houz in Hyderabad’s …
The European Community has approved a draft directive under which member states will have common air quality monitoring standards and pollution limits. The directive will cover 14 air pollutants, ranging from sulphur and nitrogen dioxide to ground-level ozone and carbon monoxide. The Community envisages pollution limits for all the substances …
*Every year, 4 million children in Africa and Asia die of diarrhoea. * Nearly 800 million people in the 2 continents are at serious risk of contracting chronic respiratory diseases and cancer from indoor air pollution. * It is believed that global warming could trigger epidemics of tropical diseases worldwide. …
THE errant ways of humans have the most unexpected effects on ecosystems. Ecologists J Graveland and his colleagues at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology say that air pollution and the subsequent acid rain have had enormous impact on the reproduction of a common European bird -- the great tit (Nature, …
IT HAS taken decades of singleminded toil for the world's leading green organisations to move centripetally from what was considered the lunatic fringe to a position of such popular power and eminence today that governments disregard their opinions only at their own risk. This is civil society at its best: …
The Central Pollution Control Board in exercise of its powers conferred under section 16(2) (h) of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act,1981 (14 of 1981) notify the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, 1994.
After the Victoria Memorial, it is the turn of the Belur Math, headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission, to be an environmentally endangered landmark near Calcutta. Air pollution is causing sandstone to peel off from the upper dome, parapets and cornices and discolouring the upper stories of the Math, which was …
CONTRARY to common belief, the main culprit of the "sick building syndrome" is neither cigarette smoke nor polluted air wafting in from outside. It is the increased airborne fibres from ceilings, insulation, ventilation duct linings and other construction materials, says a recent study (Environmental Science and Technology, Vol 28, No …
Citizens of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra have decided to revive their agitation against the Rs 700-crore copper smelting factory of Sterlite Industries India Ltd in the district. Last August, local environmentalists had formed the Ratnagiri Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, which campaigned against the unit located at Zadgaon, protesting that its operations would …
A sophisticated environmental pollution information and control system (EPICS) is being developed jointly by the Union ministry of environment and forests and the Delhi-based National Institute for Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS). According to A K Mathur of NISTADS, the key feature of EPICS would be the production of …
In a bid to make pollution control more efficient, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has proposed an all-India environment protection service, which will function as an enforcement agency. CPCB chairperson D K Biswas has also recommended recently that the board structure be replaced with an integrated authority possessing a …
VEERAPPAN, the legendary sandalwood smuggler, may be nabbed shortly, but putting an end to rampant sandalwood smuggling in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu may prove considerably more difficult. The ban on sandalwood export, in conjunction with anti-people conservation measures, have seen more and more people turn to sandalwood smuggling, with the …
CHECK any restaurant in northern India; the chances are you'll find the name Palam Potteries on their plates and cups. Since 1955, this plant, located near the India Gandhi airport in New Delhi, has supplied its ware to restaurants and hotels. But the threat of relocation forced the management to …
"IT IS A sad reflection on our society that we shall probably have to wait for another series of massive locust plagues before politicians and financiers will take a serious long-term look at the problem," wrote Professor Chapman, a renowned expert on locust control in the 1970s. The truth of …
AIR, WATER, garbage, radon toxicity, sludge, noise. More than a part of our daily lives, these are perennial if hackneyed jargon. Few people would love to begin their mornings with them, fewer would care to read about them and even fewer disgruntled citizens would care to buy a book and …
THOUGH chemical manufacturer DuPont withdrew its Benlate DF fungicide from the market in 1991 and subsequently paid about $500 million to settle nearly 2,000 claims filed by growers, its troubles are not yet over. In the first of more than 400 Benlate damage suits, a jury in Arkansas found the …
IGNORING vehement protests by environmentalists, the Sri Lankan government has decided to go ahead with construction of a coal-fired thermal power plant in Trincomalee, on the island republic's eastern seaboard. Ecologists have been objecting to the project ever since it was first proposed in 1987 by the Ceylon Electricity Board. …
CAVIAR, the ultimate synonym for luxurious living and a major Russian export, is facing a triple threat of poaching, pollution and petroleum. Female sturgeon swim down the Volga river to the Caspian sea with their bodies heavy with the eggs that are pickled to form caviar. But with poachers flourishing, …
ALASKAN authorities seeking to rebuild the state's dwindling caribou herds have decided to allow airborne slaying of wolves to the extent that their population is halved. But beset by protests by US wildlife enthusiasts, such as the New York-based Fund for Animals, the helicopter proposal has been temporarily grounded. The …
WHILE it has become fashionable to talk of ecological economics, minus the jargon, the subject simply attempts to calculate the full cost, which includes environmental costs, that the society should pay for producing a commodity. And that is where it differs from everyday market economics -- it takes into account …
LINKING together individual molecules to make complicated structures, much in the same way as children playing with Lego, chemists are now trying to construct materials whose properties they can fix beforehand. At least half a dozen groups in USA, Canada, Europe and Australia are assembling large arrays of molecules to …
