COMMANWEALTH GAMES 2010:

The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be the nineteenth Commonwealth Games, and the ninth to be held under that name. The Games are scheduled to be held in New Delhi, India between 3 October and 14 October 2010. The games will be the largest multi-sport event conducted to date in Delhi and as per the reports of Central Pollution Control Board it will adversely affect the air quality in the capital. The board’s member-secretary, SD Makhijani, said massive building work for October’s Games and the subsequent traffic congestion are to blame for a large increase in nitrogen oxides and particulate matter in the air in New Delhi.

Moreover New Zealand teams are planning a hit-and-run mission at October's Commonwealth Games in India, just because of Delhi's high pollution. A report by a leading sports scientist has warned New Zealand athletes to prepare offshore and fly to India as late as three days before their events, to minimise the effects of air pollution. Usually, athletes would spend a fortnight in the Games village before their events. As per the report by New Zealand Academy of Sport performance physiologist Paul Laursen, pollution levels in Delhi of 144 ppm (parts per million) compared to 88 in Beijing. The city has more than four million vehicles and nearly half run on diesel, leading to high levels of carbon monoxide in the air. Forbes magazine recently rated Delhi the 24th dirtiest city in the world.

The air pollution monitoring and forecasting system, which has been set up especially for the Commonwealth Games, threw up these statistics. Six venues, including Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Indira Gandhi Stadium and the Commonwealth games Village had moderately high levels of CO while the IGI Airport showed worryingly high levels, scoring 300 on the air quality index of 1-500. Laursen has investigated venues and facilities in Singapore, where Canada and Australia's Games' federations have already made bookings. He said that it’s best not to arrive soon. Regarding the effects of it he said that the Worst hit by the pollution will be endurance athletes competing outdoors and the competitors in the cycling road races.

Mineral water or plain water?

 

It’s the most common phrase you hear once the waiter has taken your order at any better than average restaurant in the country or anywhere in the world (Although in the west it would be “Bottled water or tap water, Sir”? And for a plethora of reasons ranging from paranoid health consciousness to not sounding cheap around your girl, you’re most probably going to end up saying “Mineral Water, please”, although you know that the restaurant’s tap water is also good purified water.  And each time you do so, you become an unwitting accomplice to an environmental disaster thinking it’s just one small piece of plastic. Don’t believe me?, Let me run you through the most likely
life cycle of this one small piece of plastic.

Plastic is basically a petroleumproduct, needless to say how environmentally damaging the oil extraction industry is. Oil’s deemed to be extracted for fuel purposes, only more drilling and processing is done to extract this particular component from the crude. Once this Polyethylene Teraphtalate is extracted it’s stored in the form of small pellets or miniature bricks (if I may) and shipped to various bottling companies where each pellet of plastic is heated and blown to acquire its
shape. It’s then filled with the beverage/water and shipped to distributors, then dealers and then retailers onto the supermarket shelves.

What happens next is the Devil........

Retailers sell these water bottles to consumers as well as businesses like restaurants and hotels. Once consumed, the empty bottle is as good as a purpose built pollution causing device. You’d be convinced in a restaurant that the bottle is safely disposed after use. Or when you use a plastic bottle on the road you make sure you throw it in a trash bin and feel like you’re being very considerate about the environment. But, little did you know that this plastic that you dump is going along with the rest of the trash straight into a landfill and is going to rot there for as long as 700 years. Or worse, it is dumped into the ocean where it travels all the way into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that stretches all the way from Hawaii to Japan, making all aquatic life deteriorate and die under this stretch. Same is the case with the restaurant that carefully disposes the plastic in a trash bin and is then taken into a landfill by the garbage disposal guys. 

Here are some quick global stats about water bottles:

1.       Every hour 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped (not recycled).

2.       Every year, over 1,000,000 tons of plastic reaches the Pacific Ocean alone.

3.       Every year 1,000,000 aquatic animals die due to the plastic dumped in the oceans.

4.       Only 10% of the bottles are recycled. The rest go into landfills or oceans.

Source: Container Recycling Institute (USA)

Here’s the point I’ve been trying to make: As long as your used plastic bottle is not put into a recycle bin that’s managed regularly by a recycling company, it’s as good as throwing it in the middle of the road (you wouldn’t do that, would you?) Another alternative is to reuse your plastic bottles at home for storing water in the refrigerator. However, the best option remains complete avoidance of bottled water.

It’s too hard to totally avoid plastic; however, once you’ve purchased it you have total control over its fate. It can become a cute little thing in your fridge or it could be out there in the pacific undergoing photo-degradation, disintegrating into fine polymer particles, being consumed by unwitting aquatic animals (which you might consume one day if you’re into seafood). You decide the bottle’s fate: Refill or Landfill

And the next time you go on a date to that classy upscale restaurant, you know what to say to the waiter.

POLLUTION EFFECTS ON HUMANS

There is no doubt that excessive levels of pollution are causing a lot of damage to human & animal health, plants & trees including tropical rain forests, as well as the wider environment. Pollution effects are indeed many and wide-ranging. Experts admit that pollution effects are quite often underestimated and that more research is needed to understand the connections between pollution and its effects on all life forms.

Adverse air quality can kill many organisms including humans. Ozone pollution can cause respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, throat inflammation, chest pain, and congestion. Water pollution causes approximately 14,000 deaths per day, mostly due to contamination of drinking water by untreated sewage in developing countries. An estimated 700 million Indians have no access to a proper toilet, and 1,000 Indian children die of diarrheal sickness every day. Nearly 500 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water. 656,000 people die prematurely each year in China because of air pollution. In India, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year. Studies have estimated that the number of people killed annually in the US could be over 50,000.

Oil spills can cause skin irritations and rashes. Noise pollution induces hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress, and sleep disturbance. Mercury has been linked to developmental deficits in children and neurological symptoms. Older people are majorly exposed to diseases induced by air pollution. Those with heart or lung disorders are under additional risk. Children and infants are also at serious risk. Lead and other heavy metals have been shown to cause neurological problems. Chemical and radioactive substances can cause cancer and as well as birth defects.

Other pollutants such as lead can interfere with the normal production of red cells and can induce anemia. Lead may damage the nervous system, impair mental function, impair memory, affect learning and cause behavioral changes. Benzene, nitrogen dioxide and small particulate matter can cause damage to the bone marrow and the immune system. Benzene was found to be linked to leukemia especially after long term exposure.

There is a lot to be done by politicians and governments for controlling this increasingly threatening situation. Public health actions should be undertaken based on pollution control measures with the primary target being the diminution of the death toll that we witness today.

SMOKE FREE SHIMLA

Shimla has become the second smoke free city in entire North India after the city beautiful, Chandigarh. It will soon become a hundred percent smoke-free town in the North India. This fact was revealed in the media workshop on ‘Smoke Free Shimla” and cigarettes and other tobacco product prevention act (COTPA) 2003. The Voluntary Health Association of India, an NGO, conducted a survey and found 97% of public places as totally smoke-free and as many as 3211 violators were challaned throughout the state.

Intensive awareness campaigns regarding abuses and ill effects of Tobacco have been conducted in 52 Senior Secondary and High Schools in Shimla according to Shri Narender Sharma, Executive Director, Himachal Pradesh Voluntary Health Association. According to him there is a great need to implement the section 6 of COTPA, which pertains to the banning of sale of tobacco related products within the 100 yards from educational institutions. As per the survey 94% public places in Shimla were found free from cigarette butts or other tobacco litters.

"As per the surveys about 95 percent citizens of Shimla agreed that smoking was harmful and a cause for economic hardship for themselves and their families and 53 percent smokers want to quit this bad habit," Dr. Gopal Chauhan, State Nodal Officer, Tobacco Control said. He said that Himachal Pradesh would soon be making the

policy to ban Gutka and other tobacco related products and even the transport department has issued the notification for authorising the official incharge to challan the person violating COTPA.