Environmental Poisons – Toys: Unforgettable Incidents!

Chinese toys: I was staying with my niece at Karaikudi, Sivagangai District, Tamil Nadu. In the next morning I was sitting on the compound wall and her son was playing there. After ten minutes I noticed that he was taking something which was pink in colour from his pocket, smelling it and putting it back in his pocket. At first it did not draw my attention. Since he was repeating this several times, I asked him to show it.

It was a broad tree shaped synthetic toy, very soft and smelt heavily on some organic solvent. I called my niece and advised her to throw it immediately in the waste box and not to buy any cheap toy made and marketed by China. Your child could become easily addicted to organic solvent without its own mistake. It is the duty of the parents to learn and know more about these kinds of dangers which could be avoided completely.

The important message is that poisons are everywhere in the environment. If we know this we can avoid much hidden poisons. When you confront with these poisons, never ask why should I do this, but be happy to have this chance to do that which is important for the health of all.

I am not against Chinese toys. The German market is also full of Chinese products and my electric shaver which I use every morning is made in China. But there is a big difference in the method of procuring the products from China by Germany and India. We, in Germany stipulate all the technical specifications to the Chinese companies and they produce accordingly products for us. This means which raw materials they must use or which they must not use since they are banned by German laws.

It could also be done in India; it is the duty of the concerned authorities to enforce the right guidelines. It is the duty of the consumers till then to avoid buying such poisonous toys or other products.

Why did I write this book “Environmental Poisons and Illness?

It is my thirst to know more about the modern and emerging India that brought me to Chennai and I stayed alone at first 2006 December to 2007 May here and afterwards for four months from November 2007 to March 2008. Before that for decades my contact to India is Dinamalar, India Today and The Hindu. I talked to many persons, hundreds, even thousands to make a picture of real India. It was interesting and at the same time in most of the points it was also very shocking.

I discussed with many persons and understood the mechanism of life here almost after 40 years. Several good as well several bad things I came to know. The values of my old 1970 India were no more there in many fields. I have seen the aggressive markets where the multinationals do their business. Things which are prohibited even in their mother or father countries are sold here. To my surprise I found several things are very costly here but the services are very poor, particularly in the insurance sector. I could roughly compare the situation what we had in West Germany during 1965 and 1980. The situation was exactly like here now, everybody was busy in making money, nobody bothered about the environment and eating processed food from USA was considered a big fashion. The household and industrial wastes are dumped every where. Many parents had less time for their children. Nobody was prepared to listen us. We warned that the bad effects would only be seen in their children or grandchildren. In the beginning or middle of 1980s the problem started and in some of the areas it is still there. Crores and crores of rupees are spent from the taxpayer’s money to rectify these scandals. This had affected the health of the children and adults also. As a rich country we did more than enough although we have to do more and I am proud of this. What about the multinational companies who produced the poisonous waste; they disposed it illegally in Germany or in other developing countries in all continents. They earned very well, paid less tax because of their countless daughter companies throughout the world, came out well with very little fine for some of their responsible managers in the court of law.

The government, NGOs and the clinical toxicologists started informing the people about the importance of our environment because the party formed by some leftist students, “The Greens Party”, entered slowly in the assemblies and parliament. Their main programme is only to save the nature and environment and wanted to punish all who did or do bad to these including small or big industries. This was a boon to Germany because the other four important parties took nature and environment in their party programmes. If it could have been happened in India also then we could be very happy and this would be the only possibility to change things in the long run. At the same time we must give the persons living here all the necessary information which they need. Give the mothers all the necessary information, she can give further to her children and it goes automatically to the coming generations. The aim of my books is to give people enough useful and practical information and make them socially aware. Then the chances of cheatings and exploiting may become less.

So I have taken four fields where I did lot of research and pioneering work to inform our people about the chances and risks. What we did was not only applied research but also the treatment of several different difficult patients. As the head of the department of clinical toxicology I am the right persons for all the questions of the illegal drugs, prescription drugs, environmental medicine including residue analysis and in occupational medicine. We work with doctors closely to solve the problems in all these fields. We have also worked with many important pharmaceutical companies and other industries. But, in this job, hard but healthy critism is very important and it is also accepted by many.

Most of them know much about the environmental pollutions, poisons and illness but wait for the others do something. The rest has no idea and do the same thing as always. The same procedure as every year is only in their thoughts and deeds. But many live now may experience the after effects of this pollutions and their dangerous and life threatening effects in their life. I wonder how these people live in their homes when they make the public place so dirty. Here the so called educated people are also not better than others. Our culture and tradition are pure, then from where we got the dirty genes so that we make everything dirty. I have given here information about almost all the poisons we may confront in our life and with this knowledge you could react always right.

Here also prevention is better than cure and very healthy and cheap. The parents must learn and then teach their children. This is the only applicable and possible solution.

The environmental poisons are everywhere. Even all the mothers’ milk in this world is contaminated, but breastfeed as long as you can and it is always the healthiest for the baby. More research must be done to know clearly about the dangerous environmental illness.

We all are sitting in the same boat, do something to your environment or die!