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Poison in our lives

Realisation has dawned on the Royal Geographical Society meeting in London the other day that the water the humans drink poses a growing health risk. Naturally-occurring arsenic is cited as the villain. It affects 140 million people in more than 70 countries, resulting in lung disease, cancers etc. There, it is noted, is also a link between arsenic in water and arsenic in food, as crops are raised with irrigated (poisonous) water. Fears are that hundreds of thousands of people are dying a slow death.

This, however, is only a small part of a larger problem. How safe are vegetables, or even the grains that we use for daily intake? Those of us living in cities do not know how the items we buy from shops are cultivated in far-flung farms. Excessive use of chemicals, for higher yield, of pesticides to keep insects away, and of preservatives to increase the shelf-life of these food items are, without doubt, harmful to the human body system. Air pollution is another serious problem. It is a moot point whether all nations have proper systems to monitor the danger levels.

It will not do to have systems alone to monitor such things. Those systems will have to be effective in guarding public health. These days, many nations are introducing laws to curb smoking in public places. That is to allay fears of tobacco being a risk to public health. The same eagerness must be shown in matter of providing safe water and safe food products for mass consumption as also in keeping air pollution under tolerable levels.

Agencies involved in monitoring public health risk factors must be seen to be doing their job. After all, no nation can play with the lives of its people.