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| SCIENCE TRIBUNE | Thursday, October 10, 2002, Chandigarh, India |
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Beware of dirty detergents
Space
rock can jam life on Earth NEW PRODUCTS &
DISCOVERIES
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Beware of dirty detergents DETERGENT
cakes and washing powders have become an inseparable part of every
consumer’s life. The market offers a variety of washing powders,
each brand claiming to wash the cleanest at unbeatable prices to
consumers. Detergents, however, exert a hidden but taxing cost on the
environment and consumer health due to their environment-damaging
properties. Phosphates are one of the main ingredients in most
present-day detergents and are also the primary culprits in polluting
water bodies and causing accelerated eutrophication — a situation in
water bodies like lakes, rivers and ponds which results in ultimate
death of the water system. Undoubtedly, phosphates (STTP — sodium
tripolyphosphate — the most commonly used phosphate in detergents)
beef up a detergent’s cleaning properties by softening hard water
and preventing carbonates from settling on the clothes washed, but
once the washing is done, phosphates wreak havoc on the environment
when they are washed down the drain. Environment load In
India, per capita detergent penetration and consumption in the
consumer household at 2.8 kg per annum is low as compared to the
developed countries of the world (12-20 kgs in Euorpe and 28 kgs in
the US) or even developing countries like Pakistan, Nigeria or the
Philippines which consume 5-6 kg of detergents every year, per person.
Yet, even the slightest rise in phosphate consumption in India is
cause for worry as India’s water scarcity problems are multiplying
and demand has already outstripped supply. According to a World Bank
study, India suffers a damage of $ 5710 million an average, due to
water pollution and its impact on rural and urban health, especially
in context of diarrhoeal diseases. The detergent industry anticipates
a rise in use of high quality detergents by around 10 per cent per
annum. More and more rural consumers, who have traditionally used the
detergent cake for washing, are being initiated into the detergent
powder category. According to one survey done in and around Kanpur, it
was found that expenditure on detergents ranged from Rs 77 per month
for rural households with income of Rs 1,414, to Rs 105 for households
with no machines and incomes of Rs 2,965, to Rs 198 for urban
households with washing machines and incomes of Rs 20,800. Dhobis
spent Rs 173, with estimated net incomes of Rs 2,220 per
month. Increased usage of detergents calls for stricter regulations
on use of phosphates in Indian detergents brands. The industry’s
stand has been that water pollution caused by phosphates in detergents
is minuscule and that there is no concrete data to warrant any
phosphate-control measures. However, experiences of developed
countries, especially Canada, show that the use of phosphates has to
be nipped in the early stages to arrest irreparable damage to the
environment and consequently human health and the economy. Developed
world example North America and Europe were caught napping when
use of phosphate-based detergents exploded in the 1950s and 1960s.
World attention was drawn to the menace when in the 1960s, the Great
Lakes of Canada were found swarming with ever-growing presence of
algae and dead or dying fish. The Great Lake region was of crucial
importance to Canada’s economy as by 1966, one out of every three
Canadian and one out of every eight American lived in the Great Lakes
Basin. Alarmed by the obvious degradation in water quality and its
consequent ramifications on public health, grassroots and
government-level action was initiated to stem the flow of phosphates
in the Great Lakes region. An International Joint Commission was
formed to address the problem and one of its main recommendations was
"immediate reduction of phosphorous content of detergents and the
total quantities of phosphorous-based detergents discharged into the
Great Lakes System". The detergent industry responded by trying
to alarm consumers with claims like the phosphate ban would be
equivalent to "setting back cleanliness standards by more than 20
years", and by saying that "women would find it virtually
impossible to continue to enjoy the benefits of modern automatic
washing machines". When consumers continued to push their demands
for phosphate-control measures, the three companies which dominated
the industry — Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, and Colgate
Palmolive (known as "the big three") — challenged the
regulation by litigation, and when the strategy proved futile, adopted
a policy of challenging local and state regulatory laws in the
courts. Canada, however, went on to impose regulations, which
systematically brought down phosphate-levels in detergents from 22% of
Phosphate by weight in detergents in the 1960s to 5% in 1987. Other
countries like Switzerland, Norway, Venezuela (and 12 states of the
United States) have gone a step ahead by completely banning the use of
phosphates in detergents. This is a good example of the fact that if
the industry so wishes, it can indeed eliminate the use of phosphates
in detergents. Worst polluters One of the disturbing trends
in usage of phosphates in detergents is that brands which are found to
be the best are the ones with the highest concentration of phosphates.
In independent comparative test done by UK Consumers Association
"Which?", it was found that 3 out of the 4 best performing
detergents were phosphate-based. Test results of 18 laundry detergents
done by French Consumer Magazine, "Que Chosir", revealed
that 6 of the 9 top line detergents in the French market were
phosphate-based. In India, the situation is no different. Comparative
Test results of 14 brands of popular Indian brands done by consumer
organisation, ‘VOICE’ showed that the top three contained more
than 20 per cent STTP in them by weight. Analysts and experts
recommend that regulations be put in place immediately that require
that no detergent product contains more than 5 per cent phosphorous by
weight, and by 2006, no detergent should have more than 2.2 per cent
phosphorous, and by 2011, the ratio should be brought down to 0.5 per
cent. The Indian detergent industry and the government, however,
remain unmoved by these recommendations. In fact, the Ecomark Scheme
introduced by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 1991 remains
ineffective in the case of detergents as no brand has taken up the
challenge to reduce its environment-unfriendly traits. Both, the
industry and the government need to be pressured to clean up their act
as far as detergents and phosphates are concerned. VOICE |
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Space rock can jam life on Earth A
space rock big enough to cause widespread damage and death will hit the Earth only about once every 1,000 years, but experts say that the destruction will be so extreme that nations should develop a joint defence against asteroids. Participants at a NASA-sponsored conference on the hazards of comets and asteroids smashing into the Earth estimated that the planet probably would be hit about once each millennium by a space rock big enough to release about 10 megatons of explosive energy. Such a rock, estimated to be 54.8 metres across, scorched through the atmosphere over Tunguska in Siberia in 1908 and flattened trees across 2,072 square km of forest land. No crater was found and experts believe that the damage came from atmospheric shock. Bigger space rocks, which could cause considerably more damage, would hit the Earth even more rarely. An object of about 304.8 metres would flatten everything in an area the size of a state and kill everybody there. The planetwide effects of such a catastrophe are unknown, but debris thrown into the atmosphere can diminish sunlight and affect agriculture for months. If such a rock should hit the ocean, it could trigger tsunamis, giant waves hundreds of feet high, to roll through and destroy coastal cities. A planet-killer asteroid, big enough to destroy whole species, would be rarest of all. The last came 65 million years ago when a 9.7-km-wide rock wiped out the dinosaurs and about 70 per cent of all species. Although scientists can estimate the odds of an impact, they can’t really pinpoint when it can happen. “We don’t know when these accidents will occur,” said Duncan Steel of the University of Salford in England. “There could be one sometime in the next 100 years. We don’t know.” Asphaug, the meeting’s organiser, said scientists recognised the risk to the planet of asteroids and comets in the last few decades and only, now, are beginning to shape proposals to protect the planet. “This is the only major natural hazard which can be made predictable and even eliminated if we find the dangerous ones and learn how to modify their orbits over time, he said.
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NEW PRODUCTS & DISCOVERIES THE JBL Creature three- piece speaker system includes two desktop speakers and a subwoofer. Both speakers and the subwoofer are magnetically shielded to provide the greatest protection against image distortion on a computer monitor. The JBL Creature comes with unique “capacitance touch” volume control buttons on the right satellite. Both satellites also have downfiring green LEDs for a cool desktop look in minimum lighting environments. Sells for about $ 130. MACHINES THAT A Silicon Valley company has unveiled new electronic perception technology that could be used to let PCs, mobile phones and automobiles “see” their environment. Canesta said the patented technology it has developed enables devices to perceive objects around them in three dimensions. The technology might let an automobile warn its driver of a dangerous lane change, for example, or could be used in a baby monitor that would sound a warning if it saw the child trying to climb out of its crib. Canesta also believes its tools could put an end to traditional input devices, like keyboards and computer mice, since computers would be able to detect hand and body movements and translate these into commands. This might let a person play a computer video game, for example, where the computer detects and interprets the person’s movements without the need for a joystick or control pad. The technology could also let a person change television channels with a gesture at the TV set instead of using a remote control. Canesta said it has already done substantial research into the area of gesture-controlled consumer electronics and “virtual” keyboards, and the company is now working on adapting its technology for incorporation into personal electronics later this year. “It is the ability to sense the nearby world as three-dimensional contours, rather than as flat images, that makes such unrelated but intriguing applications ultimately possible,” said Nazim Kareemi, Canesta’s president and chief executive officer. Canesta’s technology is based on 3D electronic perception sensor chips and on proprietary image processing software that is embedded in the chips. The technology uses a concept similar to RADAR, where radio waves are bounced off objects and timed to determine how far away the objects are. With Canesta’s technology, bursts of invisible light are constantly bounced off surrounding objects, and information about the images and their distance is quickly processed to determine their location in three dimensions. Most of the essential calculations are done directly on the chip, which means the hardware itself provides a 3D “contour map” of the world, ready for use by software applications. CHOCOLATE 2600
YEARS AGO Mankind’s love affair with chocolate began at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, new research reveals, says the international science journal “Nature”. New analytical techniques have found cocoa residues in 2600 year-old ceramic vessels from the town of Colha in what is now northern Belize. The previous earliest evidence for chocolate consumption dates around AD 400. Until the Spanish Conquest, the region was the centre of Mayan civilisation. The Mayans were prodigious consumers of cocoa. They are thought to have consumed it in some form with almost every meal, mixing it with other ingredients such as maize, chilli and honey.
PTI |
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CROSSWORD
Clues Across: 1. Property of a substance of being converted from solid to liquid on being heated. 9. A measure of randomness (disorder ) of the system. 10. A reflecting surface made of glass with amalgam backing. 11. Hydrophilic colloids in jelly form. 12. Reptiles do so easily. 13. …..dram is made of 3 lines, each having own scale and representing the values of a variable. 14. .….metal is an alloy of Aluminium, Zinc and Copper. 16. Important part of a housing unit. 20. End of a cantilever carrying no load. 21. A product obtained by the action of an acid with alcohol. 23. Smallest particle of the chemical element. 24. Double sulphate of Aluminium and Potassium. 25. A small body of still water. Down : 1. The longest and strongest bone in the body. 2. Having only one magnetic or electric pole. 3. Column of small height. 4. Supply water through channels. 5. A device connected in series with a current for increasing the normal circuit voltage. 6. An institute doing research in high temperature plasma fusion (abbr.) 7. A unit of heat. 8. …. Metal, an alloy of Copper & Zinc. 15. A kind of grain. 16. A polyester raw material (abbr.) 17. Temperature at which magnetic susceptibility becomes normal. 18. Idealised four operation reversible cycle in a four stroke engine. 19. A well known inert gas. 22. A vital juice circulating in plants. Solution to last week’s Crossword:
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