Regional workshop held on environmental problems of NE region

GUWAHATI, August 11: In line with the Government of India's special policy for the development of north eastern region, a workshop at Regional Research Laboratory, Jorhat was held recently, for preparing the strategy for assessing the environmental quality of the north eastern states including Sikkim, stated a press release. The workshop was jointly organised by the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre (ITRC) of Lucknow and RRL, Jorhat, both CSIR laboratories. Held at RRL auditorium under the name and title "Workshop on Environmental Quality related to Food, Water and Health", the workshop was the first of its kind which provided an unique platform of the experts and officials concerned of the region to collectively discuss and interact on the environmental problems confronting the region. JS Sandhu, FNA, Director, RRL, Jorhat and PK Seth, FNA, Director, ITRC Lucknow presided over the workshop which was attended by a total of 54 participants from the North eastern states viz. Assam, Arunahcal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland. The participants included experts, scientists, medical personnel, top government officials and others besides the scientific community of RRL, Jorhat. The objectives behind the workshop were (i) to identify the typical problems causing health hazards (ii) to undertake preliminary assessment of quality of food and water samples (ii) to explore organising regular training programmes in food and water quality assessment methodologies and instrumentations. The business of the workshop started with the presentations of ITRC, Lucknow and RRL, Jorhat with the help of slides and transparencies. PK Seth presented the activities of ITRC in which he dealt at length the work being pursued at ITRC in the areas of environmental toxicity related to food, water and health and also briefed the expertise available at ITRC. SK Khanna, Dy. Director, ITRC also spoke about the methodologies adopted by ITRC for identifying problems related to pollution and contamination causing health hazards. NC Dey, scientist spoke abut the RRL's activities in the area of testing and analysis and the infrastructural facilities available at RRL for analysis. He also mentioned abut the problems related to water which used to be frequently referred to RRL for analysis and also discussed about the projects that had been carried out at RRL on water and food with relevant findings. After the presentations of ITRC and RRL, the workshop was made open for interactions by the participants present. There was overwhelming interactions among the participants and during the discussion a number of very serious health problems, requiring immediate and urgent attention of the government as well as other concerned, came to the fore. Of these, special mention can be made about the serious health problem raised by A.B. Paul, Additional Chief Engineer, Public Health Engineering Department of Diphu abut the fluorine contamination of natural drinking water in and around the Karbi Anglong district of Assam that silently but surely effected lakhs of villagers causing permanent physical deformity and making invalid. Sounding a note of caution he mentioned that unless the problem is checked immediately, it is likely to spread and engulf more and more other areas sooner or latter. At the close of the workshop, ITRC Director, PK Seth suggested for channelling the problems through appropriate means by using even the bits and pieces of the small data that are available in small pockets of various places and localities of the region. As recommendations, it was unanimously decided by the workshop that (1) all the Government department, agencies and NGOs of different states of the NE region, dealing in environmental problems concerning water food and health, must exercise at their local-level to identify the problems of their locality and then pass on the same to a common regional platform to discuss further for prioratizing the problems and for adopting strategies for finding solutions. (2) All efforts will be made for creating awareness among the masses about the problems and preventive measures to be taken and (3) RRL and ITRC will work for imparting training of the trainers who in turn will train the masses to detect and identify the problems at local-level.