Intoxicating Industries (Published in Times of India)

Rapid increase in industrialization has opened not only the vistas of development and prosperity but also the new avenues for employment of a large multitude of workers; notwithstanding the degradation of environs and health-status of people though. Hefty cost of unprotected industrial activities on the environs cannot be undermined and needs to be paid attention to. There are a plethora of health hazards that are linked to the industrial activities requiring emphatic mention.

The most adversely affecting toxicity is due to heavy metals. From the point of view of environmental degradation and health-risk to workers in particular and public in general, cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium, manganese, nickel and arsenic are the subject of major concern. These metals and metalloids to a large extent are dispersed in the biosphere through industrial effluents, organic wastes, refuse burning, and transport.

Inhalation and ingestion of metal-laden toxic fumes and particulate matter, comprising metal dust, metal oxides, and soot, emanating from chimneys of factories and metal foundries is inevitable in absence of safety norms. Detoxification by metallothionine, protein molecules present in our body, is a natural biochemical process. However the deficiency of dietary proteins, particularly in case of weaker sections of society, as well as exposure to large doses of these toxicants, outweigh the detoxification process and predispose the affected people with deleterious cumulative toxic effects, often resulting in kidney failure, respiratory diseases like emphysema and asthma, hepato-toxicity, causing malfunction ofliver, nervous disorders and behavioral changes.


One of the other occupational health-hazards includes exposure of poor workers to high temperatures of the furnaces, not to speak of the raise in atmospheric temperatures in the already fierce summer heat. Many small factories have mushroomed in the congested lanes and by-lanes which emit a lot of poisonous smoke from furnaces and generators. The smoke and screeching sound of machines and generators have been suffocating lives and causing varied types of diseases”.

These industries are hazardous to lungs and ear, mainly as most of the patients catch diseases
namely pneumoconiosis which are caused by direct exposure to industrial pollutants. Moreover secondary to primary disease caused by these pollutants patients are more prone to develop diseases like tuberculosis, bronchial asthma, COPD and interstitial lung diseases. These diseases as a whole affect quality of life and start early onset of ageing symptoms.

Industries are in fact the life line to the development and employment of people. It is their situation and non-conformity to the safety precautions that make their being precarious to the peaceful and healthy living of general public. Location of the polluting factories in densely populated residential areas of the city is flagrant violation of the rules of Industrial Pollution Control Board. It is high time when all such polluting units were shifted to places, away from safe limits of habitation.