Deepawali,
a Hindu festival of resplendently-shimmering lights, presents enticing festivity
everywhere, be it residential colonies, shopping complexes or markets. The
warmth of love that the people exchange in the form of greetings and gifts
makes Deepawali all the more brightly beautiful.
Over
rejoicing at the celebratory occasion with increasing amount of fire-work is
deleteriously telling on the fragile health of both people and the environment
alike. Over-zealous children, youngsters and reckless parents get bent upon to
mar the serenity of the festival by resorting to play with varied
high-decibel-high-polluting fire-crackers and bombs, even several days before
Deepawali and obliviously continue to pollute the environs and destroy the peace, tranquillity and health of the ailing and the normal people alike. The highly
toxic gases produced by burning of the gun powder billow into the atmosphere
and trigger the latent respiratory diseases in the exposed people.
The unbridled functioning of unsafe furnaces
in the factories as well as the ever-increasing vehicular traffic spews tons of litres of deadly intoxicants into the atmosphere. To make matter worse, enormous
burning of fire-works on the eve of Deepawali vitiates the already-insulted
atmosphere with dangerous intoxicants like sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide (the silent killer), oxides of nitrogen, fumes of poisonous
oxides of heavy metals like chromium, manganese, nickel, copper, lead, and cadmium. The toxic gases having high density tend to remain in the lowest
layer of the atmosphere, called Troposphere, and concentrate in the congested
areas of the city and houses. These pollutants irritate the skin, mucous
membranes of eyes, ears, nose and throat, causing multiple morbid problems and
diseases like asthma, damage to cornea, ear drum, heart diseases, headaches, and dizziness in addition to a spate in the accidental burns.
Large volumes of sulphur dioxide and oxides of
nitrogen emitted during the play of fire-work dissolve in the water vapour and
turn into tiny droplets of pure acid floating in the smog (smoke plus fog). The
airborne acid and particulate matter are dangerously irritating to the lungs.
The airborne acid also slowly defaces the costly buildings and other property.
Air
Pollution can expand beyond a regional area to cause serious global problems.
The pollutants (CFC's) are responsible for damaging the vital ozone layer,
spread by God for our protection from the most energetic UV radiations of the
sunlight. That is why there is now more news of skin cancers, cataracts and
reduced yield of some crops. Carbon Dioxide is the main culprit associated with
global warming. The increasing levels of this gas retain the heat of radiations
which should otherwise escape from the earth into the upper atmosphere after
the day's heat.
Surging
to dangerous levels of several ppm above the indicated safe limit by WHO,
sulphur dioxide is the major polluting gas during the Deepawali days, in the
air we are forced to breathe in. Another serious problem is of the noise
pollution that is caused by explosion of the high decibel bombs. Human ears
cannot tolerate noise louder than 80-90 dB. The government has so far been
unable to put a check on the sale and use of these high intensity bombs. The
undeterred explosions of these bombs are making the people partially deaf. The horrendous surge in levels of air
pollutants scares away the older and asthmatic people to flee to safer
destinations in the countryside or sparsely inhabited parts of the town. To the
ailing and suffering patients, approach of Deepawali gives them nightmares of
discomfort and sufferings.
