BANGALORE: According to a study, several toxic metals are present in high ratio in the city’s environment, posing threat to human health.National Referral Centre for Lead Poisoning in India (NRCLPI) conducted a study in Bangalore. Thuppil Venkatesh, Principal Investigator of NRLCPI, oversaw the study. He said lead’s presence in environment was hazardous to human health even if its concentration was 0.1 parts per million (ppm).He informed that lead concentration in soil samples collected from main bus stands in the city was 250- 500 times higher than that (see box).Four students from the Department of Biochemistry, St Aloysius College, Mangalore, were involved in the study. One of these students, Bindhu N, told Express that besides lead, other metals (such as titanium, manganese and iron) too were found in the environment in alarming proportion. She informed that concentration of lead and cadmium was more than 100 ppm in soil samples taken from around Hosur Road.Thuppil said even if a trace of lead enters human body, it affects the health, particularly cognitive faculty. He said lead poisoning causes irreversible health damages even at low levels of exposure.He informed that chiltdren particularly are more vulnerable to lead poisoning.He said lead poisoning might reduce children’s IQ, impair growth and make them hyperactive.He added that children thus affected are prone to learning disability, hearing loss and insomnia too.The reasonAnother student involved with the study, Zohya Shaikh, said the increase in the concentration of the metals could be because of presence of lead in gasoline, lead’s usage in tyre industry and its presence in discarded paint scraps that gets mixed with the soil. She said high concentration along Hosur Road could be because of industrial waste disposal on both sides of the road.A S Sadashivaiah, Chairman of Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), told Express most of the pollution in the city was because of vehicles.He said vehicles were responsible for 45 per cent pollution in the city. A highlevel committee has devised a 14-point programme to reduce pollution in the city, he said and added that making CNG compulsory for vehicles would reduce pollution.Map to tell how toxic an area isNRCLPI is soon to finish preparing a map that will tell what the lead concentration is in different areas of Bangalore.The aim of the map is to let people know how safe or otherwise the environment is where they may be considering to shift.
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