Sahil yaduvanshi, 4, loves airplanes. He does not have to go far to look at one. He just has to peer out of his play school window and look up every few minutes to see one. “This is Cattie…,” he shouts out to his friend Pushpesh as he looks out. Sahil enjoys the sight of the planes, and wants to become a pilot when he grows up. His only complaint is to do with the roar of the planes. “I cannot hear my teacher and my friends because of the noise,” Sahil said. He studies in Aadyant pre-school in Vasant Kunj in Delhi. Most of his friends find it difficult to concentrate after a third runway—Runway 29—became operational at the Indira Gandhi airport in September 2008. “The children get disoriented as there is an airplane flying by every few minutes. We have to repeat lessons and even raise our voices to be heard,” said Bhavina Bembi, a school counsellor.

In flight path The problem of noise disturbance is not restricted to the school but the entire residential area from Andheria Modh, east of the airport, to Bijwasan to its west. These localities are in the airport flight path. “We got the noise levels in Vasant Kunj area checked privately and found it varies between 75 and 100 decibels,” said Anil Sood, president of the non-profit Chetna.

This is much more than the limit of 55 dB during the day and 45 dB at night set by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) for residential areas. Before the runway was built, the noise level varied from 59-65 dB, according to studies carried out by the cpcb in areas around the airport in 2004 and 2007. Environmental clearances were also given a go by. Sood said he had filed an RTI application and found no environment impact assessment was carried out before constructing the third runway. The Delhi International Airport (Private) Ltd (dial), the company that manages the airport, has now agreed to undertake noise abatement measures. This was after a meeting with the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (epca) on January 10 to discuss noise abatement measures.

Measure noise “We are interacting with resident welfare associations of Vasant Kunj and other localities. We will take corrective measures,” a dial spokesperson said. dial has promised to install six aircraft noise monitoring systems (anms) by June this year. This conforms with cpcb guidelines for monitoring noise pollution around airports, issued in June 2008. “Right now airports hire contractors to measure noise pollution.

They use a simple sound level meter. An anms is a complete set of sound level meters along with software connected to the air traffic control room and measure the noise of each aircraft that lands or takes off,” said a cpcb official. He said this would help compare data of aircraft. These instruments cost Rs 50 lakh each and would have to be imported. “Class 1 sound level meters, made as per international specifications, cost about Rs 10 lakh and come with their own software. An anms will have three or four of these devices, said Piyush Kumar a sales engineer with Josts Engineering Company Ltd, an importer. As per the minutes of the epca meeting, the airport managers have proposed closing Runway 29 during the night and switching off one or two engines at the time of landing to lower noise levels. Phasing out old noisy aircraft and using only one runway during off-peak hours have also been proposed. Once that happens Sahil has better chances to work towards his desire to fly.

A cpcb official said it is difficult to maintain the noise standards in residential areas near airports at par with other localities. New standards are being worked out, he said. In most countries, noise limits in the airport vicinity vary from 57 dB to 90 dB with a night curfew in many of them. Residents around the airport want a ban on flights at night with immediate effect.

INDIA intends to increase the share of nuclear power from 3.1 per cent of its total energy generation to 25 per cent by 2050. Six nuclear power reactors are under construction and eight are in the pipeline. While the country plans to expand mining of uranium to feed the reactors, a yet-to-be-released study by the environmental group “Toxics Link” pointed out that it lacked knowledge about handling nuclear waste; the existing uranium mines do not follow requisite safety methods.

Most uranium is mined in Jadugoda in East Singhbum district and three other places in Jharkhand. The ore in Indian mines contains a low percentage (0.042-0.051 per cent) of the mineral, except in Meghalaya. The problem with low-grade ore is that extracting a small amount of concentrated uranium generates a large amount of waste. The ore grade is high in Meghalaya but an onslaught of rains makes the terrain almost inaccessible for six months in a year.

The Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) plans to invest about Rs 31 billion to set up new mines and processing plants in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya as part of the eleventh plan. “The proposed mine at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh involves extraction of 3,000 tonnes of uranium per day from underground mines spread over 879 hectares,” said the study done from August to November. Quoting members of the non-profit Mines, Minerals and People, the study said for a uranium concentration of 0.039 per cent, the waste to be disposed of would amount to nearly a million tonnes per year.

The waste rock generated by uranium mining contains a significant amount of radioactivity.

“No inventory seems to have been maintained on how this radioactive waste is utilized and where it has gone.”

said Upasana Choudhry, the key researcher of the study. This waste was reportedly given to people for construction of houses and roads, but that has officially stopped now.

Processing the ore generates slurry called tailings. In Jadugoda, waste ponds in which these tailings are dumped as well as tailing pipes that occasionally burst are occupational hazards. A tailing pipe burst on August 16, 2008, near the Dugridih village in Jadugoda, spewing it with uranium waste.

Nuclear waste management practices in India are governed by the Atomic Energy Act 1962, which states that there should be no human settlement within five kilometres of a waste site or uranium tailing pond. “Even though Jadugoda has been in operation for more than 30 years, seven villages are within one-and-a-half kilometres of the danger zone. Dugridih begins just 40 metres away,” it added.

“UCIL mines at Jadugoda makes use of a ‘revolving door’ contractor arrangement, whereby workers are dismissed as soon as they show signs of increased radiation doses,” the study said, quoting the non-profit Jharkhandi Organisation Against Radiation. The organization works with tribals in the seven villages near the tailing pipes.

According to a survey conducted in 1999 by the organization in the seven villages, 47 per cent of the women respondents reported disruptions in menstrual cycle, 18 per cent said they had suffered miscarriages or given birth to stillborn babies in the past five years, 30 per cent reported fertility problems and nearly all women complained of fatigue, weakness and depression. “The most visible impact of the mine has been deformed children,” the survey said.

Of the three substances listed for PIC at the fourth meeting of the Conference of Parties (cop-4) to the Rotterdam Convention, only tributyltin was listed at the meeting held from October 27 to 31 in Rome. While seven countries opposed asbestos from being blacklisted, in case of endosulfan only India was responsible for its exclusion.

“India was put in a spot when country after country joined in accusing it for its entrenched position of not allowing the listing of endosulfan, a highly toxic pesticide,”

said Madhumita Dutta of Chennai-based advocacy group The Other Media.
Kerala, where endosulfan killed hundreds of people before being banned in 2002, passed a resolution on November 5 demanding that India retract its statement at Rotterdam Convention. Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said India should ban the use of the pesticide. State agriculture minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran said he was surprised the Centre did not find evidence to ban it. “We have given them enough social and statistical evidence and data provided by the Kerala Agricultural Univerisity,” Ratnakaran said.

Sruthi, a young girl of Padre village in Kerala’s Kasargod district, was born with stag-horn limbs, an ugly result of 25 years of spraying endosulfan on cashew plantations. Sixty-something Mangabhai Patel was exposed to asbestos for over 25 years at the Ahmedabad Electricity Authority in Gandhinagar before being diagnosed with asbestosis, a chronic respiratory disease. Both are unaware of the meeting that took place miles away to discuss the hazardous substances they and thousands like them are victims of.

“In case of chrysotile asbestos, not a single country which opposed the inclusion has any objection to the scientific process or document. They all opposed it politically,”

said Datta. The countries that opposed the inclusion of asbestos were India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan Republic, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Ukraine and the Philippines. The Indian delegation, led by environment and forests ministry officials, said it was tough to decide on asbestos because the study on it by the

National Institute of Occupational Health was still under way. “The Indian delegation acted under pressure from representatives of the chrysotile asbestos and the chemical industry,” said Gopal Krishna of Ban As-bestos Network of India, a group of health, environment and labour activists.

When her husband took chronically ill after communal riots drove them to Juhapura, a ghetto on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, poverty made life seem unmanageable. Free will then became a matter of Rs 8,000 for 40-year-old Zainab Bi. For a sum like that she was willing to swallow an unknown pill once in three months. It wasn’t much they were asking for really, so she gladly gave her thumb impression on the dotted line.

For companies researching new drugs the thumb impression was proof that Bi submitted herself to the experiment of her own free will. It was far more expensive to have such proof in countries where the multinational drug companies that sponsored the research had their headquarters. They were far more cumbersome, involved lengthy documentation and rigorous insurance plans. Clinical research organizations (cros) made the task far easier for these companies by carrying out their research in the ghettoes of India’s big cities. Drug trial was far less daunting; and inexpensive. People were more than willing to offer their bodies for bio-chemical experimentation. The official guidelines warned against monetary inducement.

It took Bi, and so many like her in Juhapura, only moments to make up their mind when a woman agent from a newly opened cros, Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd, approached them for participation. She explained they would be required to take newly developed drugs for diseases like malaria, chikungunya, hiv/aids even. The agent spoke of possible risks, side effects and what not. Not all of it made sense to Bi. What did sink in was that she was going to be paid Rs 8000 for some new medicine that could cure hiv/aids. She had heard of this disease in radio messages.

In the beginning, Juhapura’s women were not sure how they would get their family’s permission to spend a night, or may be two, at the clinical research lab on the national highway not far from their slum area. When they learnt they were going to be paid between Rs 4,000 and Rs 10,000 the deal was too sweet to resist. The family could not afford to object either.

The transition from the city centre, where they earlier lived, to Juhapura made economic refugees of most people living here. Before the riots many of the 5 lakh inhabitants of Ahmedabad’s largest Muslim ghetto lived in thriving bustling areas like Naroda Patiya, Gulbarg Society, Vatwa. But Juhapura was a world apart, where the community was both the consumer and the vendor. The tailors, vegetable and meat sellers, small time hair-dressers and watch repairers that practised their trade sold services and products to one another. The vibrant market of the city centre was absent here.

Naturally therefore, if a tailor was making Rs 200 a day in Naroda Patiya, he could barely manage Rs 50 a day in Juhapura, said Noorjahan, community leader attached to a group ambitiously called Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Indian Muslim women’s movement. Once Bi’s husband fell chronically ill, it was hand to mouth for the couple and their four children. Under the circumstances, nitpicking over side  effects and other safety issues was a luxury. Rs 8000 was what mattered most.

Did they not worry at all? Jannat Bibi said she had heard they were tested for drugs for diabetes, asthma, cancer and even neurological disorders. Noorjahan said some women did complain of stomach problems and rashes on the body. Bi, who has been doing this for three years, said there was no reason for worry. “It is perfectly safe. I haven’t had a single problem in all these years.”

“…All eyes are on the women after a paper printed their photos. But what can they do? Going for these trials is their main source of income” NOORJAHAN, Community leader

Exposé leads to gossip

The problem Bi and her co-travellers in clinical trials faced was of a very different nature and not anticipated by any of the 300-odd women who made an occasional windfall by offering to participate in drug trials. In June this year an Ahmedabad Gujrati daily published an article on clinical drug trial and reported how multinationals made guinea pigs of the city’s poor; the article carried photographs of the Juhapura women with their names. In the uproar that followed, the women became the subject of gossip and criticism for venturing in the night to experiment with unknown drugs. Embarrassed by the fingers pointed at them, 55-year-old Amiya Bano’s son and daughter-in-law made her leave the house.

“These women are angry with me for bringing the newspaper reporter here. They are troubled because all eyes are on them now. But what can they do? Going for these trials is the main source of income for their families,”

said Noorjahan.

The trial

The drug trials were indeed a bit like Kafka’s trial for these women. They were not very clear, like the protagonist in the novel, what they were being tried for. Nor were they sure who was behind the trial. “They make us stay overnight, take our blood samples and then we have to take the pill next morning. We are not supposed to seek remedies anywhere else but the company if some ailment crops up,” said Bi.

So far nothing dramatic has taken place, said Noorjahan. But who can tell what manifestations will show up may be years later? And links between cause and any devastating side-effect will be lost in the hurly burly of India’s ghettoes, where clinical trials are gaining popularity as a livelihood option.

India offered just the perfect setting and plenty of business sense for conducting clinical trials. The subjects and patients who could be recruited at low cost made India a favourite destination for global pharma companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithkline, BristolMyers, and others. Add a technically competent workforce and a friendly drug control system and the clinical trial business was set to touch us $1 billion by 2010, up from us $200 million in 2007, estimated India’s Associated Chambers of Commerce and  Industry.

The drug regime would become even friendlier when regulations proposed by the Drugs Controller General of India were formalized; this was likely to be soon. The proposed regulations recommended phase i trials that tested safety and tolerability of a dosage of drugs developed outside India be allowed if the manufacturing company collaborated with an Indian one. At present India allowed phase i trials only for drugs formulated in India and drugs to treat hiv or cancer.

However, phase ii and iii trials for drugs formulated abroad were allowed in the country as they had already been tested safe. Phase ii trials checked the efficacy and side effects of a drug while phase iii trials confirmed its benefits and side effects on a wider sample. “Phase i and ii are the most dangerous stages of clinical trials in human beings.

Opening the doors to these trials will only increase exploitation of the poor. Why should we allow phase i trials of medicines which may not even be used in India and even if they are, it will only be the richer sections that will benefit,” said a public health activist.  “If these trials were for diseases that affected the masses, like tuberculosis and kala azaar (leishmaniasis), then we could support them as the result was going back to them and not feed corporate interest,” said Mira Shiva, chairperson of the ngo Health Action International, Asia Pacific.

An official of the cro, Lambda, was upbeat about the proposed regulations “This will only benefit the community. Even if the mncs do not share their intellectual property now, they will eventually have to come to India to market the drugs.”

The pharma giants collaborated with an Indian research agency for clinical trials that did the job for them at dirt-cheap rates, said a senior sales manager of a leading Ahmedabad based pharma company. In 2005, the government also passed the Patents (Amendment) Act, which assured protection of patents held by foreign companies, thus encouraging them to conduct trials in India. If and when something did go wrong, there was no punitive mechanism. “It is a long chain where work has been sourced down from the company to a clinical research organization to a hospital and finally to doctors. If a problem occurs, all of them will pass the blame to the other. There have been cases of suppression of mistakes in the past,” said Shiva.

Remunerations for clinical trials were also an issue. Volunteers were not supposed to be lured with payments.

“Participants may be paid for the inconvenience and time spent… However, payments should not be so large…as to make prospective participants consent readily to enroll in research against their better judgment, ”

said Indian Council for Medical Research guidelines on clinical trials. Clearly, the guidelines had no bearing on the brisk business of clinical trials in distant Juhapura.

The guidelines also stated a government-registered institutional ethics committee, comprising doctors, activists, lawyers and pharmacologists, would ensure there were no monetary inducements. With a gush in the number of clinical trials, several private ethics committees sprang up overnight. The cros needed an approval from an ethics committee before they could initiate a drug trial. It was simple. These  committees approved of trials for a fee. cros were only too happy to pay.

High inorganic arsenic exposure to diabetes has been established earlier by studies in Bangladesh, Taiwan and Mexico. But the effect of low and moderate levels of arsenic was unknown. A study in the US has found that inorganic arsenic, even at low levels, may cause diabetes. Found in mineral deposits in rocks and soil, arsenic leaches into groundwater, which when supplied for drinking, can be harmful, say researchers of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA.

The researchers studied data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2003-04 for 788 adults. They found that individuals with diabetes had higher levels of inorganic arsenic compared to those without diabetes. Apart from contaminated drinking water, flour and rice can also contain small quantities of inorganic arsenic, if grown or cooked in areas with arsenic contaminated soil or water.

The study says that 8 per cent of the public water supply system in the US may exceed arsenic levels of 10 micrograms per litre, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for arsenic concentration in drinking water.

“Estimated daily dietary intake of inorganic arsenic in the US ranges from 8.4-14 micrograms per day for various age groups,”

said the study published in the August 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This study predicts a grim future for India where arsenic poisoning is spreading to new areas. India is also called the diabetes capital of the world. However, one problem with the study is that the direct linkage between arsenic exposure and diabetes has not been explored.

“This is a cross-sectional study. Two observations have been made on the basis of data available. Only the association can be claimed, not the causality. The two things may happen together, but it’s not necessary that one causes the other. Further studies need to be carried out,”

said Nikhil Tandon, professor in the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, AIIMS, Delhi.

Shashank R Joshi, endocrinologist at Lilawati Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai, says,

“Arsenic related diabetes would form a very small percentage of the total diabetes in the country which is high, due to susceptible genes, bad diet and lack of exercise.”

“Had it not been for the change in wind direction within 10 minutes of the fire, it could have spread to and destroyed all the nearby factories in the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (gidc) and villages”

says Manoj Kotadia, manager, fire and safety, Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, Ankleshwar.

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Drum flying out of the fire

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 1

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 2

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 6

The fire at BEIL was brought under control within 24 hours but people in surrounding villages are still reeling from the effects of toxic gases: a burning sensation in eyes and nose, difficulty in breathing and in some cases, as Down To Earth saw, rashes and fever. The cause of the fire is not known but preliminary investigation by the central and state pollution control boards and the local administration has exposed gross violations of environmental and safety norms at the treatment, storage and disposal facility (tsdf), which has also bid to incinerate the hazardous waste lying at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal—a lucrative contract of over a million dollars. As Down To Earth went to press, it was reported that the Industrial Health and Safety Department had registered a case against beil under the Gujarat Factories Act, 1948, for making seven sheds for storing hazardous waste when it had permission for only two. It was the seventh shed that caught fire. Inquiries into the lapses of the extremely hazardous facility are on.

Dark dusk Black smoke at one of the sheds where the barrels are stored was first noticed at 5.30 p.m. “My office people observed the smoke and informed me,’ said P N Parmeshwaran, vice-president, environment, beil. However, the Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, just 2 km away, was informed only by 6 p.m. People in Jitali village, about a kilometre from beil, saw barrels flying in the air. But the company’s alarm at the panchayat building failed to ring. Later, the villagers found out that wire connections had not been made.

“Soon it was dark, the fumes were noxious and for a long time it was difficult to breathe,’ said Nilesh Kumar Patel of Jitali as he showed Down To Earth the footage of the blaze on his cell phone. Jitali was one of the three villages put on high alert; people were told to evacuate. The other two villages are Sarangpur and Dhadhaal Inam. Huge chunks of ashy waste fell all around. “Stone-like things fell on my roof. In the morning they were still stinking and oozing fumes,’ said Momina Shoib Kazi of Jitali. The impact was worst in Jitali because it was in the wind’s direction.

“High wind velocity and a change in the direction (towards empty fields) of the wind from west to east prevented a big disaster.Wind velocity of over 20 km per hour did not let the smoke settle, otherwise the barrels lying all over the place would have caught fire and it would also have been difficult for us to wade through the smoke,’ said Kotadia.

Children at Dhadhaal Inam, a kilometre west of the facility, had just come out of the madrasa when they heard explosions. They ran in the direction of the blasts and ended up with headache and a burning sensation in the nose and throat. Asif Iqbal Panchbaya, 10, has got rashes and high fever. “I took him to Bharuch for treatment but his condition has worsened,’ said his father Iqbal Panchbaya. The Primary Health Centre sent squads to the villages the same night. It says the fire affected 89 people.

Shocking irregularities
To understand the effects of pollution one needs to know the kind of toxins released in the air. But beil officials could not explain the nature of the waste burnt. “It was a kind of tarry waste or a solvent-based waste of high calorific value. We are trying to ascertain what exactly it was,’ said Parmeshwaran. The Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, however, lay down that all tsdfs have to keep a record of the kind of waste received and check the waste before accepting it for treatment.

RAVLEEN KAUR

Left in haze: Nature of waste unknown

“Thirty-seven kinds of waste are stored at a landfill site. Under the hazardous wastes rules a tsdf has to provide a monthly report to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) of how much waste it received, its classification, how much was stored and how much incinerated. The gpcb should reveal these reports. The company is at fault, but so is the pollution board for improper monitoring,’ says Yogesh Pandya, managing trustee of Safety, Health and Environment Association, a Bharuch ngo.

On the second day after the fire, gpcb installed machines at Jitali, beil and at Aventis’ factory to monitor the air quality. It also told Down To Earth that parameters were by and large under control. But gpcb did not collect samples for dioxins, furans and volatile organic compounds, which would indicate the toxicity of the air. “No lab in India is equipped to test dioxins and furans, so what can we do?’ said R G Shah, environment engineer, gpcb. Asked about heavy metals, Shah said samples were sent to the Netel India labs in Mumbai on April 4. When Down To Earth checked with the company, samples had not been received till the evening of April 8.

Since nobody knows what was burnt—as happened in the Bhopal gas tragedy—it is difficult to monitor contaminants or check for toxicity. While incinerators burn waste at very high temperatures to eliminate toxins, the fire burnt the hazardous waste at a much lower temperature. This is bound to release high levels of contaminants, which will settle on land and water.

Even the quantity of waste stored at beil raised eyebrows. According to the records it submitted to gpcb, 12,825 tonnes of oil was lying in its compound—though it cannot treat more than 50 tonnes a day. The hazardous wastes rules state an industrial unit cannot store waste in its compound for more than 90 days. In May 2007, M S H Sheikh, director of Surat-based ngo Brackish Water Research Centre, had written to gpcb about the dangers of facilities storing hazardous waste for long. But no action was reportedly taken.

beil charges factories Rs 15 per kg of hazardous waste for incineration and the money is taken in advance. That means it collected over Rs 19 crore for 12,825 tonnes of waste oil but did not treat it. Activists also point out that the fire saved the company Rs 37.50 lakh, the cost of treating 250 tonnes of waste.

What caused fire?
BEIL officials, police, district administration and even gpcb are tight-lipped about the cause.

“One of the barrels might have gone in unchecked and some reaction could have caused the explosion. However, we cannot say anything till proper investigation is done,’ said Ashok Panjwani, director, beil.

The three-member committee constituted by the district collector, who is also the head of the District Crisis Group, submitted its report on April 9. “We have been unable to find out the cause of the fire but most probably it was due to a pyrophoric reaction between steel drums and stored waste,’ Harshad Patel, sub-divisional magistrate, Ankleshwar, told Down To Earth. The report noted many safety lapses at beil: no sensor to detect gas leakage; dangerous chemicals not identified and not kept in a separate area; very few fire-fighting equipment, Patel said. “We have proposed strong action against beil under the Indian Factories Act and under environmental laws. The collector has to give directions,’ he added.

“It is beyond our power to lodge an fir against them. But we will take action under environment laws. It is obviously a case of negligence and the fire is human-induced. We will act when the actual reason is ascertained,’ said Sanjiv Tyagi, member secretary, gpcb.

Safety, what’s that?

A visit to the accident site brought more shocks. Not a single fire hydrant of the company was visible. “It took long to douse the fire because the approach road was congested and the smoke dense,’ said Kotadia. A wall in the rear of the compound had to be broken to make way for fire tenders. According to Ibrahim Patel, a medical practitioner in Jitali, the situation could have been tragic had workers been trapped inside. About 40 labourers work at the site. “There is no emergency exit in the high compound wall,’ he said.

“I came here early morning after the fire and saw people covering the oil with mud. All that will seep into the groundwater. How can they run their business in the name of safe disposal?’ asks Sheikh. Workers also complain they do not get safety masks and often feel dizzy.

At this facility where extremely toxic waste is stockpiled, instead of increased monitoring and increased safety conditions, the reverse seems to be the case. Clearly, the lessons of the Bhopal tragedy have not been learnt.