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India's Sacred River Turns Toxic

The Ganges now greets pilgrims with the smell of 'toxic muck'

By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff

Posted Nov 15, 2007 12:30 PM CST
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(Newser) – The Smithsonian travels 800 miles down the Ganges River in India to investigate the ecological degradation of one of the holiest sites in Hinduism. A symbol of purity for millions of pilgrims, the environmental reality is "pure toxic muck" laden with arsenic, mercury, and dozens of other pollutants. Twenty years after the Indian government launched a plan to save the river, conditions have only gotten worse.

"The river had turned the color of Coca-Cola," said one scientist in attendance at a Hindu festival alongside the Ganges earlier this year. But commercial pressures and accelerating population growth—400 million currently live nearby, a figure expected to double—seem to doom all preservation efforts before they begin. As for the pilgrims who come to bathe in the Ganges, they're now "an endangered species."

Boys dive into the severely polluted River Ganges to beat the heat in Calcutta, India, Tuesday, April 24, 2007.
Boys dive into the severely polluted River Ganges to beat the heat in Calcutta, India, Tuesday, April 24, 2007.   (Associated Press)
A man feeds seagulls at the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Allahabad, India, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
A man feeds seagulls at the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Allahabad, India, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)   (Associated Press)
An Indian boy looks for coins and other reusable materials in the Ganges River, left polluted after the immersion of Goddess Durga idols marking the end of the Navaratri festival, in Allahabad, India, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. Allahabad, on the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswathi River,...
An Indian boy looks for coins and other reusable materials in the Ganges River, left polluted after the immersion of Goddess Durga idols marking the end of the Navaratri festival, in Allahabad, India,...   (Associated Press)
A Hindu devotee performs Tarpan, ritualistic offerings to ancestors, on the banks of the Ganges River in Calcutta, India, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)
A Hindu devotee performs Tarpan, ritualistic offerings to ancestors, on the banks of the Ganges River in Calcutta, India, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)   (Associated Press)
Hindu devotees light lamps, as they offer prayers on a boat, on the River Ganges in Allahabad, India, Saturday, May 26, 2007.
Hindu devotees light lamps, as they offer prayers on a boat, on the River Ganges in Allahabad, India, Saturday, May 26, 2007.   (Associated Press)
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Background on the religious significance of the Ganges
Sacred Land

 
pollution • India

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