If Delhi government has to make sure that residents don’t eat pesticide laced food, it will have to push neighboring states to reduce their pesticide usage.

The Kerala State Civil Supplies Corporation (Supplyco) will start testing rice, vegetables, meat and fish for contaminants, including pesticide residue, and make the results public for consumer awa

New Delhi: Your neighbourhood sweetmeat shop may soon have to comply with stricter quality standards while preparing its rasgullas, barfis and snacks, with India’s food safety authority planning to

Urban sewage, hospital waste, and pesticide residues are polluting kole lands, the ecologically fragile wetland ecosystems in Malappuram and Thrissur noted for the integrated farming of rice and fish.

An expert committee appointed by the State government has found that sewage pollution from urban areas was being directly discharged into the main canals in the kole lands. This, it observed, often led to mass mortality of fish. Organic waste from urban areas, hospital waste, and pesticide residue from paddy fields were identified as other sources of pollution.

The excessive use of pesticides by farmers in India is hindering the country’s efforts to penetrate the global market for fruits and vegetables in a big way, according to Sreejith Aravindakshan from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Talking to The Hindu here on Sunday, Dr. Aravindakshan, who was here to participate in the National Biodiversity Congress, said India’s horticultural exports to northern Europe were largely constrained by the inability of the smallholder-dominated production system to meet western food safety standards marked by low tolerance for pesticide residue.

Fresh evidence has emerged about prevalence of endosulfan residues in the groundwater of Kasaragod district and recent use of the pesticide in the area.

A study by P.S. Akhil and C.H. Sujatha of the Department of Chemical Oceanography of Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) reported that organochlorine insecticides, particularly high concentrations of endosulfan and BHC (hexachlorobenzene), were persisting in the environment. This was despite restrictions on use of BHC, and ban imposed by the High Court and the government on use of endosulfan. The pesticide residues which remained in the soil from earlier application become the source of pollution of water bodies through land runoff, leaching and ultimately contaminate drinking water sources.

With the conservation effort in India still tiger-centric, the threatened birds need

Right at the start, this book sets the argument in motion by rapping the conservation effort in the country across the knuckles. Most of the action, it notes, is tiger-centric, with little attention paid to other taxa. Threatened Birds of India is a fine example of worldwide collaboration among organisations and individuals with contributions from hundreds of ornithologists, field biologists, avid birders and wildlife photographers, making it a comprehensive collection on the threatened birds of India and their conservation requirements.