Chennai: Residents living around the city’s Perungudi and Kodungaiyur dumpyards have long complained of foul odour, smoke, flies, eye irritation and respiratory ailments. While environmental monitoring has detected high levels of pollutants around such landfill sites, scientific evidence directly linking exposure to health impacts has remained scarce. A new four-year project, Climate, Health and Environmental Action for Landfill Emissions Reduction (CLEAR), launched on Monday aims to fill that gap while helping govts develop evidence-based waste management and public health policies.Supported by the Wellcome Trust, the transdisciplinary initiative is led by M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in partnership with IIT Madras, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) and industry experts. Beginning in Tamil Nadu and Telangana, CLEAR will combine real-time environmental monitoring with biomonitoring of children, pregnant women, adults and informal waste workers to establish links between landfill emissions and human health.IIT Madras will deploy mobile monitoring vans, hexacopter-mounted sensors and ground stations to measure landfill emissions and map community-level exposure, while SRIHER will analyse biological samples to assess health impacts. Beyond research, the project will work with municipal corporations to identify gaps in waste segregation, collection and treatment, recommend practical interventions, strengthen solid waste management systems, improve environmental health surveillance, train around 200 health professionals and 500 municipal functionaries, and develop a scalable model for Indian cities.“The aim of this project is not advice to do away with landfills. We want to develop at least one cost-effective model with a complete solution for improving waste management. We will also try to build some good models which include science, technology, behaviour change interventions and scientific interventions,” said Prathibha Ganesan, project lead of CLEAR.“Till now, PM 2.5 has largely been used as a proxy because of monitoring limitations. In this project we are deploying high-end equipment to measure ultrafine particles at hyper-local scales so we can better link exposure with physiological responses,” said Prof Chandan Sarangi of IIT Madras.The project comes as India grapples with 3,084 open dumpsites that make about 4% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers said Chennai’s waste, with its high proportion of wet organic matter and plastics, produces emissions with distinct climate and toxicological effects, which requires city-specific studies. “We need to have some health based guidelines. When a new project starts, we need to do a risk assessment of health as well as environment,” said Prof Naveen Puttaswamy of SRIHER.Speaking at the launch, MSSRF chairperson and former WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said stronger evidence linking environmental exposures, air quality data and health outcomes was necessary to inform effective policymaking and interventions.
