Samples of air and wastewater belonging to the sugar mills of Sindh are being collected by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials for the last two days to check whether they are polluting environment, especially air and water. One of the sugar mills releases its toxic waste in a waterway that finds its way into the upstream Kotri Barrage. The samples are being taken under the directives of EPA Director-General Abdul Malik Ghauri, who has sent three officials, Ashiq Ali Dhamrah, Jehangir Hussain and Mohammad Hashim. An EPA official from Hyderabad, Irfan Abbasi, and two environmental inspectors from the district concerned are part of the team that is visiting different sugar mills. It was learnt here on Tuesday that the team had so far visited six sugar mills and one alcohol-producing unit. The mills included the Al-Abbas Sugar Mills, Mirpurkhas Sugar Mills, Matiari Sugar Mills, Digri Sugar Mills and Najma Sugar Mills. Their air samples and wastewater samples have been collected. The officials are travelling along with a mobile laboratory that had been gifted to Pakistan by the Japanese government. While confirming that the testing of samples would take some time, Mr Ghauri said: "Some samples are analysed in the mobile laboratory while some are sent to us in Karachi so that they can be tested at the main laboratory.' He said that the samples were being checked so that the sugar mills would improve their environmental standard. An official of the team told Dawn that one of the sugar mills was releasing its wastewater in a waterway that finds its way into the upstream Kotri barrage. A report said that the exercise of testing of air quality has been initiated by EPA in view of the on-going sugarcane season which began in December and would continue for another couple of months. According to environmentalists, smoke emitted from the chimneys of sugar mills pollutes the air and it causes various problems for the people who live in their vicinity. Mr Ghauri said that first air and liquid samples would be analysed and then the sugar mills would be graded. When asked whether any proceedings would follow if the sugar mills were found guilty of environmental pollution, he replied: "Certainly notices will be issued to the relevant sugar mill if the quality of air emission and wastewater don't conform with the National Environmental Quality Standards.' According to water technologist Dr Ahsan Siddiqui, the wastewater of a sugar mill is released on its own open ground by the mills management. He, however, added that the mill in question had no right to do that because wastewater through seepage contaminated water contained in the sub-soil, which is a natural resource of water for people who obtained water through suction pumps.

Experts have called for a better surveillance of poultry birds and use of a foolproof mechanism for the detection of the Avian Influenza virus. They regretted the recent elimination and disposal of hundreds of birds suspected to be infected with the H5N1 virus at a Malir farm was carried out under no official supervision. The poultry farmers' association maintained that the owner of the affected poultry farm, Mashallah Poultry Farm, had been persuaded to cull his birds kept in a farm in the jurisdiction of the Malir cantonment board at the earliest. He had been told time was of the essence in containing the outbreak. Health and poultry officials said they remained helpless in taking measures on a war footing as they were not taken into confidence as soon as an outbreak was reported. Following reports about bird deaths in a large number at a poultry farm on the National Highway, the surveillance staff of the Sindh livestock department collected samples from birds suspected to be suffering from some severe diseases for various laboratory tests on Feb 21. The news that the samples had been tested positive at the national reference laboratory in Islamabad for the H5N1 virus was received in Karachi on the night of Feb 23. Those officials responsible for culling remained unaware of the development for a long time and had no idea that havoc was being wrought by

One thing Canada is not short of is lakes. It has so many that it can afford to set some aside to experiment on. And that is what Karen Kidd, an ecotoxicologist at the University of New Brunswick, has just done to a small lake in north-west Ontario. She has poisoned it in the name of science.

Political parties and tribals who have been agitating against bauxite mining are planning to block scientists of the Indian Council of Forest Research and Environment when they come for a survey. It is learnt that the scientists would visit the Agency areas soon to undertake a mining impact survey. This is mandatory to get permission for mining in a forest area from the ministry of environment and forests. The proposed mining project would displace tribals in large numbers and has also evoked sharp protests from environmentalists who warn that it would have a negative ecological impact.

The waters around Sri Lanka are among the most heavily damaged and polluted ocean regions in the world, a study has revealed. The research by a team of American, British and Canadian researchers was published in yesterday's edition of Science. Activities like water and air pollution, overfishing, commercial shipping or greenhouse gas emission are continually damaging the planet and there is no sign that they will ever stop. Apparently, the most affected areas are "the North and Norwegian seas, South and East China seas, Eastern Caribbean, North American eastern seaboard, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Bering Sea, and the waters around Sri Lanka, the study said. The survey, analysing all 17 activities through which humans impact the oceans, and their conclusion was that every square mile of the ocean has been damaged in some way. The researchers have designed a map that emphasizes and explains the results of their study. The map was released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston and published in yesteday's edition of the journal Science, the Associated Press reported. "Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me,' said lead author Ben Halpern, an assistant research scientist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, according to the Associated Press. The oceans around the polar areas are the least impacted, but scientists predict they will be damaged more and more in the following years, as long as the global warming continues. "There were two things we didn't anticipate,' Halpern added in the telephone interview. "Every single spot in the oceans was affected by at least one human activity ... we figured there'd be places people just hadn't gotten to yet.' Some good news is that, in the Congress yesterday, the House voted the approval of $454 million for ocean exploration programmes and studies over the next seven years, at the National Geographic and Atmospheric Administration. Ben Halpern still has hope that things can be improved. "There are some areas in fairly good condition. They are small and scattered, but have fairly low impact. That suggests that with effort from all of us, we can try to protect these patches and use them as a guideline for what we'd like the rest of the ocean to start looking like,' he stated. e-News

Villagers in Kinnanore in Kerala's Kasaragod district called off a month-long agitation against bauxite mining. They relented on January 12 after Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan assured them that the sanction to the mines would be revoked. "The people, the panchayat and the political parties do not want this project,' said Achuthanandan.

Demanding to be heard

Chemical effluents released from factories that came up on the outskirts of Adilabad town into the tanks of the surrounding villages caused the death of 40 quintals of fish in the last two days. Villagers and fishermen of Chanda (T) village of Adilabad staged a protest on Wednesday along with dead fish brought in gunny bags alleging negligence on the part of officials concerned in taking action against managements of private factories that released harmful effluents.