Life Style - a Slow Poison

Life style, a slow poison

I often talk about water pollution due to dyeing units in Tirupur, Erode and Karur and nowadays about how these units are using the ponds in the Sathy Forest area for dyeing. But off late I realised something which made me feel that I was fooled by marketing or I have inherited foolishness. But what did I realise?

My grandfather starts his day in the farm with manuring, using neem stick as tooth cleaner, sheeka & co for bath. My grandmother use wood ash as dish wash, beetle nut and thunderbolt as mouth wash, cow dung as floor disinfectant and turmeric for beautification.

Look at this, what all are they are missing. They miss the so called sophistication of toilet cleaner, tooth paste, soap, shampoo, dish wash bar, mouth wash and floor disinfectants. But what they did not miss is the potable water.

Continuous usage of these life style products by the generations post baby boomers, we are slowly polluting the water. But we need empirical, scientifically proved evidence for this so as to accept this. Obviously such studies won't be published as it is against the interest of corporate biggies; they can hide information of any impact. But use common sense and have a look at the environment around you, specifically at the areas where the drainage water is dumped. You find that the water is slowly turned salty and finally become un- potable in these areas. The pace of such change is very slow but it is happening. Problems does not stop here, corporate are up selling the water purifiers and cross selling purified water.

As we know, solution for the former problem are using non-coloured clothes, using bio-degradable dyes or purifying the effluent water. But for the later, to my knowledge there are no real alternative products available in the market to keep up our life style; so either we need to create such products or go back in age. Do we have guts to stop water pollution caused by our life style?