Dear Panditji
How did the pesticides reach
our soft drinks? Do soft drinks manufacturers put the pesticides in the bottle?
Students of Salwan Public School, Gurgaon
Dear students,
Well, companies aren’t that bad that they’ll start putting pesticides into soft
drink bottles! Pesticides come from the groundwater that is used in the drinks.
Pesticides have been used extensively in fields to kill pests that infest crops. Their
usage went up after the Green Revolution when farmers started using new varieties of crops
that gave higher yields through high use of pesticides.
 From the sixties our soil
has taken huge quantities of pesticides. Pesticides are not degradable and they pollute
the environment.
They travel from the land or soil where they have been applied and seep into the
groundwater and also contaminate rivers and lakes. The soft drink industry uses the very
same groundwater as their source of raw water.
And water constitutes 90 per cent of a soft drink.
Usually soft drink plants are set up on the outskirts of the city or rural areas
surrounded by fields where pesticides have been used. So the solution is that the plants
adopt a thorough cleaning technology during production that completely eliminates
pesticides.
My question to you is
related to water conservation. In a city like Chennai where water is a very rare
commodity, would it be advisable to use reverse osmosis and what are the consequences? Are
there other forms of saving water other than rainwater harvesting which can be used in a
complex with 50 apartments?
Aditi
Chennai
Dear Aditiji
First of all, installing a reverse osmosis plant is costly. Secondly, disposing the
filterate (the left over after filtering) will be rich in effluents. It has to be
carefully disposed. It should not be let into the ground or sewer which will either
pollute the groundwater or increase the treatment load of sewage treatment plant.
In a complex of 50 apartments, greywater recycling can be done. A few builders in
Chennai have successfully implemented this. Greywater is the wash and bath water excluding
sewer which can be biologically treated by reed bed system and can be used for non potable
purposes like toilet flushing, gardening etc., by this way about 50 per cent of the daily
consumption can be reused.
Can you tell me about amino
acids present in seaweeds and its uses?
Rupen Mistry
Via email
Dear Rupenji,
Seaweed contains between 7 and 36 per cent of proteins by dry weight. The amino acids they
containare very similar to those of vegetables, but they are more complete, comparable to
those found in eggs. Almost all edible varieties of seaweed contain the amino acids that
humans need. That is why seaweed is considered as the food supplement for the 21st
century.
 Seaweed has a very high
content of minerals and trace elements. It is a source of calcium, phosphorus, iron,
sodium, potassium, magnesium, sulphur, copper, zinc, cobalt and iodine.
The Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos and the Hawaiians consider seaweed a food of
great delicacy and have been using it in their diets for centuries. In parts of Southeast
Asia, seaweed is consumed raw, with salads or with cooked vegetables. The Japanese refer
to seaweed as 'sea vegetables'.
Also, scientists and industrialists are constantly developing new uses for
seaweed—in the food industry, in chemistry, pharmacology, cosmetology and
agriculture, in the paper and textile industry, in the film industry and in several other
areas, even in metallurgy. |
