Thick smog, pungent smell hang in the air

khardah: an electric train leaves sodepur station and approaches khardah station. passengers feel the pungent smell of sulphur dioxide which rents the air. huge flames from factories located in the area reach up to the sky. come winter, and the surrounding is engulfed with thick smog early in the morning and again in the evenings. at the station, the signals are barely visible on such days.in 1995, there were incidents when trains had to be stopped because of low visibility. khardah houses industries which have been enlisted in the category of highly polluting ones. there are chemical, fertiliser and casting units againt whom there are several complaints. a power plant is also around and a dyeing unit. saibal gupta, an independent councillor, explains, "the number of sulphur dioxide units have been increased even after tne bhopal gas tragedy. "the pressure in the sulphur dioxide containers often becomes high. at that time it is released into the air. '' the mercury is let out into the water of khardah khal which drains out into the ganga. "we had detected mercury levels much above the permissible level both at the outlet point of the ondustry and at the point where the khardah khal falls into the ganga. requests to use titanium instead of mercury were never heeded," says samar sengupta of bigyan o sanskriti parishad. gupta puts in the those level exits even today. the water at the out let is coloured red. the mercury forms organic mercury with is highly harmful. biswajit mukherjee law officer of the west bengal pollution control board reiterates, "cases had been filed against these industries in 1993-1994. they were ordered to install proper pollution control equipments and had complied. both the supreme court and the central pollution control board had monitored them till 1996. we are regularly monitoring them at present. there has been no complaint so far''. it is alleged that sulphur dioxide units do have scrubbers and the power stations electrostatic precipitators. but often they do not work. they are put to work only when the pollution control board and the environment depatrtment employees drop in. while medical officers of industrial units and municapality sources emphasised that health scenario of the region was commendable, local doctors like r.n.pal says that asthmatic bronchitis and contact dermatitis is very high in the region. "even one year olds and still younder ones are reporting with these diseases very frequently. tbey respond only to ant-iallergic medicines. it is difficult to detect pollution related dieases due to lack of facilities and training. but one can definitely say that these diseases have proliferated greatly in the region. "a study to detect the association of these diseases with the prevalent pollution is urgently required,'' he adds.