Anakaputhur in Chennai- Place for the dumping of medical wastes
Posted on: 06/Jan/2020 9:39:41 AM
In the less than 2 months, Anakaputhur has been grabbing the eyeballs for wrong reasons. In this place, expired medicines were dumped is known. The latest news is along the Adyar banks of Anakaputhur, expired medicines were found.
In this place, close to 50 plastic medicine bottles plus strips of laxatives and ulcer tablets etc were found. On Saturday, a local activist named Pughalventhan found these expired medicines here, He has been involved in this activity for the last one year.
A month back, this local activist crossed the spot (near an incomplete bridge along Anakaputhur- Erandamkattalai Road) and he did not find any medicines. The heavy rains have made the medicines soggy and the medicines have started to degrade.
Near Kovur and near Vandalur there were surgical gloves and used syringes just a month back are known. The instances of illegal dumping have been on the rise now. The shocking information is heaps of medicines found near Nazarathpet were not removed from an empty ground till now.
The medicines in the above said places would be removed in a few days with the help of the drug control department. This was as per a senior official belonging to TNPCB. The improper disposal of medicines could have a negative impact on the groundwater in Chennai.
A study has been conducted by two Anna University researchers in this regard of (negative impact of improper disposal of medicines on the groundwater) and it has been published in the Water Environment Research Journal in September 2019.
Many pharmaceutical companies are present in places like Hyderabad, Punjab, Ganga River Basin and it is found that the samples of groundwater had traces of harmful chemicals. Point is the government had not listed out individual contaminants that cause micro pollution to check the groundwater purity.
It was brought out by one of the authors of the study named Merin Sackaria that government must immediately address the groundwater pollution due to emerging pollutants like Dibutyl Phthalate that comes from pharma based industries. He added that micropollutants present in the groundwater must also be checked just like other parameters like turbidity, salinity and pH etc.
