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Doctors warn of health hazards for workers cleaning up oil spill
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Spill clean-up workers exposed to long-term health risks
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'Monitor health of oil spill clean-up crew'
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Poison in the air

ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR
in Cuddalore
Frontline
The Hindu
04 June, 2005

Poisonous gases released into the air by some chemical units in the SIPCOT industrial estate in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, continue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of people in a number of villages in the absence of government action.

At the SIPCOT industrial estate in Cuddalore. Gases released by chemical units have severely affected the air quality in the area.

VILLAGES in the industrial area on the outskirts of Cuddalore town in Tamil Nadu are increasingly being identified more by pungent smells than their names - smells of rotten cabbage, burnt rubber, rotten egg, neem, detergent, human excreta, decomposing bodies, mosquito coils, rotting bones, decaying chikoo fruit, and nail polish. The smells come from toxic chemical compounds that are manufactured or released as effluents by the 18 companies in the industrial area and which have been damaging the environment and the health of more than 20,000 people in about 20 villages. Read more...