-GaonConnection.com At least ten districts of Bihar have reported high levels of uranium in their groundwater, the primary source of drinking water in rural areas, which far exceeds the tolerable limit prescribed by the World Health Organization. Millions in Bihar are already facing a high disease burden due to elevated levels of arsenic, fluoride and iron in their water. Presence of uranium has multiplied their worries manifold. The state government is...

-Down to Earth The Japanese government’s own figures reveal this, the organisation says in a report to mark 10 years of the disaster Just 15 per cent of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant’s core area in Japan has been decontaminated a decade after it suffered a catastrophic triple reactor meltdown March 11, 2011, according to a report by non-profit Greenpeace International. An overall average of 15 per cent of the Special Decontamination Area...

-The Telegraph Experiments by Saurashtra University represent a 'classic example' of a study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion A group of Indian scientists has decried a Union government agency’s invocation of experiments by physicists at Gujarat’s Saurashtra University to claim cow dung can shield people from radiation. The experiments purportedly showed that cow-dung cakes partially blocked radiation from Radioactive caesium. The Rashtriya Kamadhenu Aayog, a unit under the Union fisheries, animal husbandry...

-Newsclick.in Tribals lost their lands first, then got employment as contractual labourers, risking their health and lives Sanjay Gope, a 13-year-old boy from Bango village near Jadugora town in East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, can not move or speak because he has been suffering from muscular dystrophy – a group of disorders that involves a progressive loss of muscle mass and consequent loss of strength – for the past nine years. At least...

-DNA   A poisoned country   A few weeks ago, India entered into an agreement with the UN to end the use of the insecticide DDT by 2020. DDT had been used in agriculture for decades until it was restricted in 1989, but 6,000 tonnes of DDT are still produced annually for the eradication of mosquitoes and other pests. This would be perfectly understandable, except for the simple fact that DDT has become...