Chemical Pollution

On the occasion of the third International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST), hosted an event to highlight the importance of building capacity in India for air quality management.

Microplastic pollution is a growing environmental concern. Microplastics are plastic particles with sizes ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm. However, a clear consensus on the definition of microplastics is lacking and even the lower size limit varies among different studies.

In recent years, the impact of the wastes discharged in the Bay of Bengal has been significant due to high effluent inflow from secured sources. It was observed that the heavy metal concentrations in the Bay coast sediments were considerately high and varied among sampling points.

The river Brahmaputra carries around 73 million tons of dissolved material annually, which accounts for approximately 4% of the total dissolved flux into the oceans (Singh et al., 2005). The dissolved chemical load and sediment flux of the Brahmaputra River has significantly higher rates of physical and chemical weathering than other large Himalayan catchments.

Agricultural intensification in India has increased nitrogen pollution, leading to water quality impairments. The fate of reactive nitrogen applied to the land is largely unknown, however. Long-term records of riverine nitrogen fluxes are nonexistent and drivers of variability remain unexamined, limiting the development of nitrogen management strategies.

River Ichamati is venerated as a living entity and its fertile flood plains have been catering to the expanding human-mediated demands apart from harbouring an enormous assemblage of aquatic flora and fauna.

On June 8, Yale University's Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network released a report of the Environmental Performance Index 2022. India ranked lowest among the 180 countries considered, lagging behind Myanmar at 179, Vietnam (178), Bangladesh (177) and Pakistan (176).

Unprecedented expansion and anthropic activities amongst other reasons lead to choking of urban rivers with municipal and industrial sewage. Around 63% of the total 62 million litres/ day generated sewage is dumped in Indian urban rivers without treatment, as per a Central Pollution Control Board report submitted to National Green Tribunal, India.

Ponds are increasingly getting polluted mainly due to the discharge of wastewater from residential areas, sewage outlets, solid waste dump sites, livestock rearing sites (e.g., dairy, poultry), and fertilizers and pesticides from farmers’ fields.