Where poison flows in veins

Two districts – Bhatinda and Ropar – in Punjab show high incidence of cancer. The same districts are also one of the highest users of pesticides in the country. Is the chemical, persistent and bioaccumulating, invading human bodies? Centre for Science and Environment study reveals there maybe a link.

by CSE team

Everyday a train leaves from Bhatinda town in Punjab for Bikaner in Rajasthan "It’s full of cancer patients," says Umendra Dutt of the NGO Kheti Virasat. The patients are bound for the Acharya Tulsi Regional Cancer Treatment and Research Centre (RCC) – one of the 19 regional cancer research centres in the country.

The disease is widespread in the town in Bhatinda district of Punjab. According to a comparative report by the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), out of the 183,243 people making up 39,732 families surveyed in 129 villages of Talwandi Sabo block in Bhatinda district and Chamkaur Sahib block in district Roop Nagar district, "the number of confirmed cancer cases were 103.2 per lakh at Talwandi Sabo, compared to 71 per lakh in Chamkaur Sahib". Significantly, 63.8 per cent of cropped area in Talwandi Sabo was under cotton while the crop was not cultivated at all in Chamkaur Sahib. Cotton uses much more pesticides than wheat and rice cultivated in the latter village.

PPCB had commissioned the School of Public Health (SPH), department of public health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh to conduct the study, ‘An epidemiological study of cancer cases reported from villages of Talwandi Sabo block, district Bhatinda, Punjab’.

So to ascertain the high incidence of cancer Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE) Pollution Monitoring Laboratory (PML), in 2004, decided to undertake a study in these areas of Punjab. It visited Mahi Nangal, Jajjal and Balloh villages of Bhatinda district and Dher village in Ropar district. Samples from 20 randomly selected people from these four villages were collected. The samples were analysed for 14 organochlorine and 14 organophosphorous pesticides using a Gas Chromatograph based on US Environmental Protection Agency methodology.

What came out from the analysis is a truly gruesome picture. We found 15 different pesticides – a cocktail of 6-13 different pesticides – in the 20 blood samples taken from villages in Punjab. The total pesticide in average Punjab blood samples was 0.370 milligramme per litre (mg/l).

In terms of different pesticides, CSE study found a total of 0.1424 mg/l organochlorine pesticides in average Punjab samples and a total of 0.2278 mg/l organophosphorous pesticides in average Punjab blood samples. What does this imply for public health? Can such plural contamination suppress the immune system, in turn increasing cancer and other ailments?

To determine the body burden of these chemicals, US based Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regularly conducts one of the most comprehensive biomonitoring programmes in the world, the National Report on Human Exposure to the Environmental Chemicals. The second report of January 2003 analyses blood and urine levels of 116 environmental chemicals. The sample population we studied from 1999 through 2000.

Five of the pesticides tested by CSE were those studied by the CDC. On comparison, to our horror, we found the Punjab samples had far higher pesticides residues. For example, lindane residues in our samples were 600 times higher than the CDC study. Similarly, levels of DDE and DDT in the Punjab samples were 35 times and 188 times higher than the US samples. The levels of certain persistent organochlorine pesticides (OCs) in the samples were astounding: 15-605 times higher than those found in blood samples of people in the US. Even though the industry claims we use much lesser pesticides as compared to the US.

But are there any acceptable levels for these pesticides in blood? CDC’s 2003 report says the recommended value in blood for pesticides has been established by various agencies and organisations. For example, "UK’s benchmark guidance value is 35 nanomoles per litre (approximately 1,700 nanogramme/gramme of lipid)," says CDC’s report. The same lindane in Punjab villager’s blood samples was about three times this value.

Industry claims that the new organophosphorous pesticides (OPs) are low dose, less persistent. What it doesn’t mention is that low dose means more toxic. Besides even this claim has been belied. CSE study found supposedly low persistent OP monocrotophos in 75 per cent of the blood samples. Another OP chlorpyrifos was found in 85 per cent of the samples. In fact, OPs constituted more than 60 per cent of the total pesticide residues in the samples.

Monocrotophos, not supposed to persist in the body and ideally excreted soon, was found at 0.095 mg/l, four times higher than the short term exposure limit for humans set by the World Health Organisation and Food and Agriculture Organisation.

So is there a safety threshold limit? If yes, how do scientists and regulators compute it? Regulators benchmark exposure in two types: short term exposure, which leads to acute toxicity, and repeated exposure, which causes chronic toxicity. All pesticides are tested to establish toxicity – a dose necessary to produce a measurable harmful effect – usually established through tests on mice, rats, rabbits and dogs. Results are then extrapolated on humans, and safe exposure levels predicted.

The value commonly used to measure acute toxicity is LD₅₀, a lethal dose in the short term; the subscript 50 indicates the dose is toxic enough to kill 50 per cent of the lab animals exposed to the chemical. To establish chronic toxicity, animals receive a pesticide laced diet from a very young age. This continues till they show chronic adverse affects. Such experiments determine the No Observable Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) of pesticide exposure – a level in the total diet that causes no effect on test animals as compared to others maintained under unexposed conditions. Sometimes, it is not possible to deduce this number. Then the safety mark is established at the point where the first, minutest, adverse effect appears. This is called the LOAEL, or Lowest Observable Adverse Effect Level.

LD₅₀ and NOAEL values are then extrapolated to determine safety values for humans, known as acute reference dose (aRfD) for acute toxicity and acceptable daily intake (ADI) for chronic toxicity. aRfD and ADI are arrived at by adjusting LD50 and NOAEL values downwards; usually, by a factor of 100 respectively.

Besides toxicity persistence is an important trait of a pesticide. It is understood that once ingested, pesticides accumulate in body fat and blood lipids for many years. This characteristic has compelled regulation. To circumvent this problem, the industry devised new pesticides saying they degrade in the environment. But if they degrade faster they have to be far more toxic.

Unfortunately, very little is known about the link between pesticide body burden and health impacts. Biomonitoring studies – measuring chemicals in blood, urine, breast milk, fat, hair or other tissues – do reveal that large amounts of synthetic chemical residues have infiltrated our bodies. Yet, industry argues there is no evidence these chemicals cause harm. They take refuge behind what they call a lack of authentic epidemiological studies correlating disease to the invasion by a pesticide. Industry also finds it useful that there are many pesticides and chemicals involved in the assault. It makes it difficult to pinpoint blame.

But toxicological impact of individual pesticides is stark. There is also no evidence that proves the safety of carrying a chemical body burden; in fact there is growing evidence to incriminate such burden. Biomonitoring research suggests that the chemical cocktail in our bodies could be linked to a host of afflictions: developmental disorders, fertility problems, neurological disorders and cancer, with exact effects varying from person to person. In addition, virtually nothing is known about cumulative health impacts of dozens of chemicals present in the body at the same time.

RCC, Bikaner, is carrying out a study to find out the reason for increased incidence of cancer. "Pesticides could be a problem but it’s too early to link the two conclusively," avers D P Punia, RCC’s director. "We do know, however, that pesticides cause mutations. And significantly, lymphoma and leukaemia, which are linked to mutation, are on the rise. But cancer is a group of diseases and cannot have just one reason," he adds.

RCC’s experts will take time to complete their study, and might zero in on the relation of pesticide use — or tobacco, or diet — to increased cancer incidence. Villagers are sure of one thing. Pesticide use has zoomed. "20 different types of pesticides are used in our village, every year. They cost us more than Rs two crore," says Kewal Singh, Mahi Nangal panchayat member. And cancer? "I cannot directly link cancer to pollution. But pollution has increased and so has the disease," says Harbans Singh, a registered medical practitioner in village Mahi Nangal. Isn’t it time this doubt is resolved?

CSE/Down to Earth Feature Service
1,472 words

Einstein’s Century

He changed our cosmos

by T V Venkateswaran, principal scientific officer, Vigyan Prasar, New Delhi

When Max Plank embarked upon the study of physics in the early 20th century, his first lesson was that that there was nothing new to be unearthed in physics; Newton had already discovered the only universe in existence. But then, along came Einstein and replaced it with his own. "Newton, forgive me," Einstein wrote in his Autobiographical Notes, "You found the only way, which in your age, was just about possible for a man of highest thought and creative power." While Newton came up with one single system for explaining the universe, Einstein came up with two — relativity and quantum theory — both remarkably accurate in their respective domains of the very large and the very small.

Einstein laid the essential ideas of these theories in just five path-breaking papers — all published in a single year — that ended classical physics and founded modern physics. Historians call 1905, Einstein’s annus mirabilis, the miraculous year.

Now physicists the world over are celebrating the 100 years since the Einstein papers were published, with 2005 declared by the UN as the International Year of Physics.

Even today, not too many scientists are able to grasp relativity. A student asked British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, if it was true that only three people understood relativity. Pausing, he came up with the reply, "I am trying to think who the third person is". Indeed it was Eddington’s Total Solar Eclipse experiment in 1919, which provided the experimental confirmation of Einstein’s ideas.

In the 1860’s, Maxwell’s theory showed that light was oscillating electric and magnetic fields, which immediately raised the question of the medium of oscillation. Oceans had waves in water, sound waves moved through air; it seemed nonsense to imagine that waves could just be. Unable to comprehend waves that were not vibrations in some medium, physicists postulated the existence of ether, an otherwise undetectable substance through which light travels. Like swimming along the current is faster, it was anticipated that speed of light in the direction of the ether wind would be higher than speed of light in a perpendicular direction.

Prompted by this, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed a series of ingenious experiments from 1881 to 1887, to detect ether by comparing differences in the speed of light during the earth’s rotations around itself with its revolutions around the sun. But they failed, finding that the speed of light was same in all frames of reference.

The failure of this experiment was rationalised by Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s preposterous proposition that there was a contraction in the direction of the earth’s movement, just enough to make the two speeds seem the same, though he could not explain how this contraction occurred.

Abandoning the ether hypothesis as playing no role, Einstein held forth on two basic postulates. One, speed of light is invariant in all frames of reference regardless of the speed of the observer. Two, laws of physics should look the same as long as the observer is in uniform motion (first codified by Galileo). On these, Einstein construed his revolutionary theory of relativity. While everyone thought of time as invariant, Einstein brought in the theory that time was relative.

As a consequence of his new theory, Einstein proposed ‘time dilatation’: time, analogous to length and mass, is a function of the velocity of a frame of reference and furthermore, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Nonetheless, Einstein did not immediately perceive that the unchanging nature of speed of light also implied that mass and energy are interchangeable, the rate of exchange being defined by the speed of light and governed by perhaps the most famous equation in science: E=mc², in which E represents energy, m is mass and c, speed of light. This was published as notes in November 1905.

Einstein, who had confidently used Maxwell’s equations, that considered light as a wave, in his theory of relativity, made a dynamic turnaround and explained the puzzling phenomena of photoelectric effect by arguing that light was a stream of particles (later named as photons). The emission of photoelectric metals was found to have certain paradoxical properties; shining a brighter beam at metal conductors did not increase voltage, although current increased — bright light produced more electrons, but not more energetic electrons. Turn up the frequency of the beam, however, and the voltage went up. If light were to be a wave, as was thought then, both the energy and the number of the electrons emitted from the metal should increase with an increase in the intensity of light. Observations contradicted this prediction and baffled physicists for many decades.

Einstein argued that light is actually composed of tiny particles (later called as photons) whose energy is proportional to its frequency; therefore increasing the intensity of the light increased the number of photons, while the energy of each individual photon remained the same, as long as the frequency of the light remained the same. Therefore the number of electrons emitted would increase, but the energy transmitted to them by the particles of light would remain the same.

Indeed, Max Plank was the first to advocate quantising radiation (occurring in pockets of energy) but he stopped short of deducing that quantising light means it’s composed of particles rather than waves. But Einstein, in his seminal paper published in March 1905, concluded that energy in fact existed only in multiples of quanta. This profound conceptual leap paved the way for quantum mechanics and earned him the Nobel in 1921.

Between Plank’s work on quanta of heat and Niels Bohr’s later work on quanta of matter, Einstein’s work anchors the most shocking idea in 20^th century physics: we live in a quantum universe — built out of tiny, discrete chunks of energy and matter — that are wave and particle simultaneously!

Until the 1920s, Einstein’s two papers, published in April and May 1905, on ‘Brownian motion’, were the most cited. One (his doctoral thesis) inferred the size of molecules from the speed with which sugar dissolves in water. The other invented a new method of counting and determining the size of atoms or molecules in a given space, where the molecular theory of heat was applied to liquids.

In passing, this also solved the old puzzle of the Brownian motion — incessant, irregular "swarming" motion of microscopic bits of plant pollen in still water — first observed in 1828 by English botanist Robert Brown. Einstein showed that molecules hitting the particles caused the motion, so they’re real. Theoretical proof that atoms actually existed — still an issue at that time.

With the discovery of fission of the uranium nucleus, Einstein and Leo Szilard, warned President Roosevelt in 1939 of probable Nazi weaponry, and also led the Allied development of the atomic bomb (whose theoretical basis was his own equation E=mc²). But as the dangers of atomic weapons dawned, he and many of his fellow scientists became ardent pacifists, opposed nuclear weapons and argued for international civilian control. In May 1946, he became chairman of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and appealed for nuclear disarmament. An early and firm supporter of the UN, he was convinced that the solution to international conflict was world law, world government, and a strong world police.

Upset at deployment of science and technology for war, he reiterated, "Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort". His outspokenness extended to a denouncement of McCarthyism, bigotry and racism. Piqued by Germany’s growing anti-Semitism, he became a passionate Zionist, yet he expressed concern about the rights of Arabs in any Jewish state. His liberal expression even included support for socialism. He said, "uncontrolled competition results in an excessive waste of labour and the crippling of the social consciousness of individuals." His views irked the US establishment and he was under surveillance.

But Einstein’s courageous stand on the issues of our times should not come as a surprise to any student of physics. He showed the same spirit while reshaping our cosmos, as we knew it, by replacing long-cherished concepts of physics with his counterintuitive ideas about the nature of space and time. Time magazine’s ‘man of the century’, his eminence as a scientist is matched by his enduring humanism.

CSE/Down to Earth Feature Service
1,392 words

Seeds of ruin

Indian farmers grapple with debt as economy grows

by Sourav Mishra

Indian farmers are neck-deep in debt. Of the 89.35 million farmer households in the country, 43.42 million (48.6 per cent) are reeling under the yoke, says a recent survey report of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), under the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation. The report was released on May 3, 2005 and discussed in Parliament the next day. The situation is paradoxical, as the Indian economy has recorded a growth rate of over six per cent during the post-1991 liberalisation era.

The pro-liberalisation lobby considers this phenomenon insignificant as agriculture’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen drastically in recent years and stands at a mere 24 per cent today. So, the economy is largely immune to upheavals in this sector. But what cannot be ignored is the fact that 60 per cent of the country’s population thrives on agriculture.

The report implies a link between the debt-trap and farmers’ suicides. It says Andhra Pradesh (AP) has the highest percentage of indebted farm households (82 per cent or 4.9 million households) in the country. By December 2003, when the survey was concluded, at least 3,000 AP farmers had committed suicide. Police records show the numbers to be thrice more. Following AP is Tamil Nadu (74.5 per cent), Punjab (65.4 per cent), Karnataka (61.6 per cent) and Maharashtra (54.8 per cent). All these states have also witnessed farmers’ suicides in the more recent past. The amount of outstanding loan is very high in Punjab, AP and Karnataka. A study by R M Vidyasagar and K Suman Chandra of National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad, also suggests the link between debt and farmers’ suicides.

But some other economists disagree. Agriculture economist M S Sriram of Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) argues: "Higher indebtedness in these states can possibly be attributed to a larger requirement of working capital. Why should we see indebtedness as something negative? It is also very much a part of the wealthy states. For instance, Punjab’s agriculture is capital intensive and guzzles up a lot of working capital."

What makes the debt-trap more dangerous is the heavy dependence on professional moneylenders, who charge annual interest rates as high as 60 per cent. The NSSO survey says they comprise the second most important source of loans for farmers (26 per cent), after banks (36 per cent). Despite their 100-year-old existence and grassroots reach, cooperative institutions are a poor third source (only 19.6 per cent). In case of an agrarian crisis, farmers have little access to institutional credit due to their inability to repay and have the only option of approaching moneylenders, explains the NIRD study. Repeated crop failure and the inability to repay moneylenders leads them to suicide. In AP, 57 of every 100 indebted households owe money to moneylenders.

Rajiv Kumar, chief economist, Confederation of Indian Industry, points at another malaise: "Indian farmers suffer from a poor credit delivery system. Since they deal with high-risk farming, proper insurance mechanism is essential; only ensuring credit isn’t enough." Eminent economist A Vaidyanathan concurs: "In India, credit delivery is driven by supply, not demand, which forces farmers to enter the debt-trap."

An interesting finding of NSSO’s survey is that many of the country’s poorest states have a considerably better debt record: Bihar (33 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (40 per cent), Orissa (48 per cent) and Jharkhand (20.9 per cent). "A majority of the farmers in these states are involved in survival farming and hence have lesser access to credit. This makes them look debt-free," explains Peeyush Bajpayi of New Delhi-based research firm Indicus Analytics.

The same could be the reason for the people belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes having lower debtburden compared to those from other backward castes and other castes. "The statistics don’t indicate the extent of their poverty, which is much more severe. Only because they are not plugged into the credit loop, they are invisible," says Kumar. The size of land is also directly proportional to indebtedness. For indebted farmers owning over 10 hectares (ha) land, the debt load is of Rs 76,232; it lessens gradually to Rs 6,121 for those owning less than 0.01 ha.

"This high indebtedness is due to reduced agricultural investment in the post-reform era," says Kumar. Addressing this concern at the World Social Forum, 2004, development economist Utsa Patnaik pointed out: "Rural development expenditures, which averaged 14.5 per cent of GDP during 1985-90, were reduced to eight per cent of GDP by the early 1990s as part of the deflationary policies advised by the Bretton Woods institutions [World Bank and International Monetary Fund]. Since 1998, rural development funds have been reduced further, averaging less than six per cent of GDP. In real terms, there has been an average annual reduction of about Rs 30,000 crore in development expenditures during the last five years."

Development economists also say the states that have been successful in agriculture were earlier habituated to free power, cheaper inputs and high yielding variety seeds. But with the investment in agriculture declining, the cost of production went up, shrinking profit margins. For example, in AP the power tariff was increased five times between 1998 and 2003. According to New Delhi-based agriculture economist Rahul Sharma, the cost of production has gone up by 300 per cent since the 1990s. Private marketing of costly ‘wonder’ (read genetically modified) seeds and other agricultural inputs also lure farmers into the trap of input traders.

The survey highlights the fact that farmers dependent on crop cultivation are more vulnerable than those involved in other types of farming activities. Of every 100 indebted households, 56.9 per cent are involved in cultivation, mainly of staple crops. In contrast, those engaged in animal husbandry and poultry are relatively much better off (3.2 per cent of indebted households). Farmers involved in horticulture and plantation activities also comprise a mere 4.1 per cent of the indebted households.

Food and trade analyst Devinder Sharma draws serious conclusions from these facts. Because of decreasing domestic support, farmers in developing countries will shift to the seemingly more profitable horticulture and plantation crops, while developed countries will continue growing food grain crops with domestic subsidy arrangements. This will again lead to the phase of "ship-to-mouth" existence for developing countries, which will be forced to buy food grains from developed nations.

Though the NSSO survey has not been analysed by economists in detail, the initial conclusions indicate that Indian farmers are one of the biggest causalities of the free economy. The worst is yet to come.

CSE/Down to Earth Feature Service
1,108 words

Proper channel online

Software helps Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation tackle public complaints more efficiently

by Nidhi Jamwal, Mumbai and Deepa Kozhisseri, Bangalore

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is reaping the benefits of e-governance. A software it introduced in 2003 is fast changing the image of its 24 ward offices of being sluggish and incompetent, at least with regard to tackling people’s complaints. With the help of the Online Complaint Monitoring System (OCMS), the first of its kind in the world, ward staff is today tracking complaints and analysing ward-wise data quickly and more efficiently. OCMS also enables complainants to check the status of their complaints periodically.

The software was developed by Nixel Technology, which provides information technology consultancy, and Praja Foundation, a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation. "It enables people to register complaints from anywhere, any time…It has also reduced BMC’s workload and enables it to have better communication with people and coordination among wards," says Yazad Jal, chief executive officer, Praja Foundation. "Citizens can choose their mode of filing complaints, which get recorded in OCMS by the concerned ward officer. We are training ward staff on the various aspects of OCMS," he adds.

BMC’s initiative encouraged Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and Bangalore Development Authority to adopt OCMS in December 2004. BWSSB is now using OCMS to track complaints received at its 56 service stations and 17 sub-divisions. Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Bangalore Police and Bangalore Electricity Supply Company plan to follow suit soon.

OCMS is user-friendly. Statistics reveal its popularity: it registers 250 complaints daily, filed through different channels like phone calls to ward offices, calls to the helpline 1916, faxes, emails, letters and personal visits. Once a complaint is registered, a unique complaint tracking number is generated that can be used by the complainant subsequently to know the complaint status. After registration, a complaint is automatically routed to the concerned ward office for suitable action. According to the Praja Foundation’s unpublished Complaint Audit Survey 2004, almost 53 per cent complainants said their complaints were addressed in time.

What makes the software unique is the manner in which complaints move to a higher officer, with the municipal commissioner at the highest level, if not handled in a prescribed time frame. The rules for this and the time durations are specified in the Praja-BMC Citizen’s Charter, which can be accessed on Praja Foundation’s website www.praja.org. OCMS also has an inbuilt detailed management information system that makes available reports for each ward and department. These can be customised by date and other variables. Current reports include those on the status of complaint redressal, mode of filing of complaints and their movement.

Besides managing complaints, OCMS provides crucial facts about Mumbai’s civic problems. For instance, Praja Foundation’s survey report says maximum complaints pertain to drainage (29 per cent), solid waste management (17 per cent), buildings (16 per cent), and water supply (10 per cent) departments. It also shows that hotline (38 per cent) and personal visits (36 per cent) are the most preferred modes of filing complaints. Only two per cent complainants used the internet for the purpose. Data like this can help identify problem areas. For instance, chronic complaints about drainage might indicate the need for new pipes. It is hoped that systematic data collection coupled with intelligent analysis will enable BMC to respond more effectively to problems and ensure that solutions are employed before they become too urgent.

The two-year old OCMS is facing some teething problems, though. There have been cases of BMC staff marking a work done, when it has actually remained undone. Sometimes complaints can’t make it to OCMS as some BMC staff fails to feed it into the system. Work is also in progress to set up objective time frames for different types of complaints. While BMC’s initiative is praiseworthy, it hasn’t done much to increase its overall popularity. On a scale of five, citizen’s satisfaction level from BMC increased only from 2.64 in 2003 to 2.7 in 2004, according to Praja Foundation’s survey. The civic body sure needs to do a lot more.