Along with expanded availability and access, safety is one of the three prongs of food security. However, we in India have shockingly little control over the quality of the food we consume — apart from flat-out contami-nation at the level of agricultural produce to the hidden dangers of additives and preservatives and flavours, which can contain benzoates, glutamates, mono- and di-glycerides, nitrates, nitrites, and sulfites, all of which are linked...

Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-waste” industry. Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys. “My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the...

Unfettered coal mining is causing unchecked underground fires that threaten human habitation and the environment, writes geologist Dr Nitish Priyadarshi. The haunting inscription that marks the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno could well be true for Jharkhand. For, the underground fires that have been raging in the coalfields of this state over several years are now beginning to engulf its thickly inhabited areas as well. An underground mine fire that has...

Detailed project report for the yard will be ready soon    Even as Tirupur grew exponentially to carve out a niche for itself in the world textile map, the city is yet to have some of the basic infrastructure needed to keep the area clean and hygienic. One of them is ‘modern compost yard', a project that was conceptualised many years ago but did not take off owing to bureaucratic red-tapism. No-objection...

Pollution contents were 300 to 1,000 per cent more than the norms The Gujarat Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, a voluntary organisation working for environmental protection, has come out with startling facts on how the badly treated industrial effluents are being dumped in the major rivers in the State and in the sea. The rivers include the Narmada, Mahisagar, Sabamarti and Damanganga and the sea outlet is in the Gulf of Cambay. Samiti convener...