Six hundred square kilometers of Mumbai, India's capital, is over fifteen million people. That's why it has been counted as a hot candidate for the world's largest city since 2014. Historically, in terms of history, architecture, or gastronomy, the grateful metropolis, however, is one of the most polluted human settlements in the world. But everyone, and perhaps the tourist area rarely gets to the Taloja industrial zone. That was the worst turmoil caused by the August footage taken by Norwegian travelers who visited the factories on the Kasadi coast. They made a total of five stray dogs that could boast unusually blue hair.
Explanation of this unusually colorful phenomenon is simple: stray dogs often swim in local waters and open canals, collecting on the surface drifting food debris and carcasses. Staying in water that was contaminated by solvents and food dyes, however, gave them an unusual melír. There are more than a thousand pharmaceutical manufacturers in Taloja, and obviously not everyone is paying attention to the purification of process water. Named representatives of the Mumbai and Maharashtra (MPCB) hygiene departments could only say the unspecified leakage of chemicals to the riverbed, which some people use as a source of drinking water.
Hydrobiologists consider the threshold value of the so-called biochemical oxygen consumption (BOD, Czech BSK-5) 1-3 mg / l. Then it is possible to speak of mild or moderate pollution, depending on the nature of the flow. The fish are densely dying at 6 mg / l. From three milligrams of BOD-5 oxygen per liter, water is considered to be bad for human consumption. However, the water in the Kasadi River was 80 mg / l, and the safe limit exceeded more than thirteen times. Equally drastic were the concentrations of chlorides, which are also toxic. To the shores of Kasadi MPCB workers return relatively regularly. However, the results are not yet very clear.
"After countless complaints, the intense smell of Kasadi has decreased in recent years, but that's all," says Yogesh Pagade, one of the local fishermen who is involved in collecting water samples for the MPCB. "The chemical pollution of water has remained extremely high." One of the unexpected consequences of the unfortunate state was the recent "discovery" of re-colored dogs. "It was shocking enough to see their completely blue coat," says Arati Chauhan, animal protector of Navi Mumbai. "And while we have so far counted five such dogs, we do not know what the dyes and chemicals from Kasadi will do with birds, reptiles and other animals."
"Discharging any chemicals or dyes into the water is illegal," says Anil Mohekar, head of the MPCB. "And we will go to action against the polluters who are destroying the environment in Kasadi." However, the possibilities to achieve this are limited.
He has so far promised the deployment of one of the regional commissioners, MPCB, who will personally review 977 chemical, pharmaceutical, technological and food processing plants located on an area of 2157 acres around Kasadi. And when they encounter a specific mistake? "They will be required to remove the source of pollution within seven days, and if they do not, they will notify them," MPCB says.
Author: Radomír Dohnal
Source: Ekolist.cz