The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), in its quarterly report, has revealed that arsenic was present in seven brands of bottled water, which could cause cancer (of lungs, bladder, skin, prostrate, kidney, nose and liver), diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, heart diseases, birth defects and black-foot disease.

Besides this, sodium was present in five brands of bottled water, potassium in one and bacteriological contamination in three brands of bottled water.

A 10-year-study in Bhopal has found that every second person who was exposed to the gas leak 28 years ago has abnormal lung function. The study carried out by researchers at Bhopal Memorial Hospital & Research Centre and published in the February issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Research of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), shows that people exposed to the methyl isocyanate leak have a nearly 30 per cent higher chance of contracting lung disease than the unexposed population.

Hong Kong has decided to come clean with data on a dangerous form of air pollution, a month and a half after Beijing, a city with smoggier skies and a murkier approach to statistics, did the same.

After years of withholding the data, Hong Kong’s environmental protection department on Thursday began publicly releasing hourly measurements of the tiny pollutants known as PM2.5 – so called because they are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter – that health experts say are especially threatening because they penetrate deeply into the lungs.

In a study released by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, heavy diesel exhaust (DE) exposure might increase mortality rates from lung cancer. The study officially began in the 1980's, where the relationship between diesel exhaust and lung cancer was investigated. By 1989, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified diesel exhaust as a probable carcinogen.

There's new evidence that exposure to exhaust from diesel engines increases the risk of lung cancer.

Diesel exhaust has long been classified as a probable carcinogen. But the 20-year study from the National Cancer Institute took a closer look by tracking more than 12,000 workers in certain kinds of mines — facilities that mined for potash, lime and other nonmetals. They breathed varying levels of exhaust from diesel-powered equipment, levels higher than the general population encounters.

Impatient with the slow pace of international climate change negotiations, a small group of countries led by the United States is starting a program to reduce emissions of common pollutants that contribute to rapid climate change and widespread health problems.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to announce the initiative at the State Department on Thursday accompanied by officials from Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden and the United Nations Environment Program.

China's worsening air pollution, after decades of unbridled economic growth, cost the country $112 billion in 2005 in lost economic productivity, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found.

The figure, which also took into account people's lost leisure time because of illness or death, was $22 billion in 1975, according to researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

MUMBAI: When extra-extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) tuberculosis made its presence felt in Mumbai last week, bureaucrats and public health experts jotted down an ingredient that was dangerously low in availability: surgeons. The BMC is planning to get surgeons to restart the surgery programme at its TB specialty hospital in Sewri, said BMC additional municipal commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar. But given the city's history, this may not be the easiest of tasks.

People in Bangladesh exposed tohigh levels of arsenic in drinking water were more likely to report shortness of breath in a new study than those who drank water with safer arsenic concentrations.

Though researchers didn't try todiagnose the study subjects with any specific illnesses, they noted in theEuropean Respiratory Journal that diseases of the heart and lungs are commonreasons people have trouble breathing.

Six air-quality monitoring stations will start operation in January 2012 to keep records of the levels of air pollution in different parts of the country under the Clean Air and Sustainable Environment project.

Construction work of the stations in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Barisal, Narayanganj and Gazipur are in full swing, officials at the department of environment said adding that the project would cost Tk 12 crore.