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Use
of Biosensors for Pollution Control
1
Introduction: Pollution of air, water, soil, food,
human beings and the total biosphere, all are inter-related. One
needs to understand pollution in totality. Otherwise we often end
up converting one form of pollution into another, spending valuable
resources at each stage, and pollution keeps on increasing by this
amount. We need to understand the root-cause of pollution and fight
with this root-cause, instead of fighting with pollution. Pollution
is, after all, only an indication that something is wrong. It is
a warning bell, not to be suppressed.
2
Conventional Monitoring of Pollution: Conventional
pollution monitoring is achieved through sampling of polluting material,
analyzing the samples in a laboratory using physico-chemical methods
and interpreting the results. There are only a few biological methods
and these have limitations because biology cannot be simulated in
a laboratory. Laboratory techniques are also liable to errors because
the samples may not truly indicate the polluting stream and can
change during the transport and storage. There could also be errors
in the laboratory procedures. One needs simple, cheap methods and
use of natural biosensors is one such upcoming method. In fact,
common man understands pollution only through the use of natural
biosensors.
3
Principle of Biosensors: Ecology tells us that each
organism grows in specific set of conditions (niche) that can be
defined in terms of food, temperature, moisture, pH, etc. One can
thus use each organism as a biosensor for a set of conditions. After
we learn to read these biosensors, pollution monitoring becomes
a simple and quick job. We give below, a few guiding principles
that one can use while learning this technique:
1 Pollution is a result of waste of resources, or in other words,
waste is a misplaced resource.
2 Signs of pollution are visible and unpleasant, of varying degree,
and only serve as warning signals. It is necessary to read this
message and not fight with these signs of pollution (such as odour,
pathogens, pests and several other unpleasant natural phenomena).
3 Biosensors inform us of the band or degree of pollution. This is
quite enough to guide us towards an appropriate action.
4 Appropriate action not only stops the signs of pollution, but display
signs of prosperity. These are clean air, clean water stream, flourishing
vegetation, singing birds, etc. and absence of visible nuisance-causing
organisms (pests).
4
Nitrate Theory: Above guiding principles arise from
the study of ecology and when these were applied to analyze diverse
forms of pollution, Dr. Uday S. Bhawalkar arrived at the “Nitrate
Theory” that can be outlined as below:
1 Nitrates (and related compounds such as ammonia, nitrites or non-protein-nitrogen
compounds, in general) are a resource for plant growth. These are
produced in situ, by the earthworms in the soil, with the help of
appropriate bacteria. Earthworm’s role is as a regulator,
like all other big, visible animals on the earth. In fact, one can
use visible plants and animals as biosensors that define classes
of microorganisms.
2 Nitrates in air (as nitrogen oxides), water, soil, food, solid wastes
and wastewater indicate overuse and waste of nitrates and nature
indicates this to us through signs of pollution.
3 Man also shows signs of pollution, in the form of his spoiled behaviour
when he consumes food, water and air that is polluted with nitrates.
4 Natural calamities such as droughts, floods, epidemics, cyclones,
earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. also result when nitrates are wasted
on a large scale. This is common in modern times and nature warns
and also punishes us for this. These events reduce human population
that can support itself with its wasteful habits.
5 Other inorganics, too, are resources for plant production and their
waste also leads to pollution. In general, plants convert inorganics
into organics that fulfill our needs of food, energy, building and
clothing material, medicines, etc. Waste of inorganics and allowing
their increase in wrong places such as air, water and food amount
to waste of valuable resources.
6 SUJALA BIOSANITIZER is a naturally derived catalyst that prevents
this waste and stops the signs of pollution, creating prosperity
as a bonus. It turns pollution into profit. Once this is demonstrated,
one can control all forms of pollution without using law and punishment.
Man, after all, is a sensible animal and understands the necessity
to turn pollution into profit, if the techniques are simple and
cost-effective.
5
Human Pollution: This is the most serious form of
pollution today. Man spoils his behaviour when he consumes food,
water and air that is polluted with nitrates. One can thus use human
behaviour to monitor human environment.
1 With increasing pollution, humans exhibit behavioral patterns such
as sex, anger, greed, temptation, jealousy and violence, respectively.
These are overlapping, that is, the next pattern starts before the
previous pattern is over, thus producing mixed patterns. One thus
can have healthy sex, with minimal production of offsprings with
nominal pollution (this is difficult to stop). Human population,
in fact, started rising fast, only after the increasing trend of
pollution during this century! Increase in population is only a
preparation for impending disasters that will lower the population.
Nature knows how to control population of not only humans, but all
the creatures that breed much faster than man.
2 With increasing pollution, humans in fact, reduce their fertility.
This is happening now, but the credit goes to the government-sponsored
family welfare program. It is interesting to discuss why people
listen to government only in one aspect and not in all.
3 With reducing fertility, pollution also causes sex
problems, medical and legal. One sees angry sex, greedy sex, jealous
sex and violent sex. Increasing number of cases of killing of girls,
because of one-way love indicate the pollution of human environment.
Punishing the criminals is not enough; one needs to go to the root
cause.
4 AIDS is considered as a sex-derived problem. One needs to use sex
to remove nitrates from our body. This is why, the AIDS-control
program harps upon use of condoms, not on no-sex. One can control
AIDS only by controlling nitrates in food, water and air and SUJALA
BIOSANITIZER can help in this task. Prof. Duesberg, a virologist
from the University of California, Berkeley, has published several
papers relating nitrates and AIDS (http://www.duesberg.com/).
5 In fact, HIV is a fire-fighter, cleaning our body of nitrates and
not the cause of AIDS. Vaccine against HIV is difficult to develop
because HIV mutates faster than the speed of research. This is good
for us because, use of HIV vaccine will only increase human behavioural
problems in the band of violence.
6 AIDS is an advanced form of TB, the wasting disease that bothered
us when there were no antibiotics available. Shifting the patient
to a clean environment (where the sanitariums were situated) was
one option. Now, the antibiotics do not work because their band
of operation has been crossed by today’s pollution. It is
the failure of antibiotics, not the failure of human immune system,
which causes AIDS today.
7 Cancer, too, is linked to consumption of food, water and air having
nitrates. Nitrates reduce the oxygen level in human tissues. Dr.
Otto Warburg who received the Nobel Prize in medicine in the years
1931 and 1944, states that cancer cells are anaerobic. According
to Dr. Stephen Levine, a renowned molecular biologist, hypoxia is
the fundamental cause of all degenerative diseases.
8 Increasing health problems, such a cancer and AIDS, and increasing
behavioural problems in the society, thus indicate increasing pollution
of human environment. It is necessary to note that physical health
problems are meant to arrest the potential criminals and keep them
at home or in the hospital so that these potentially dangerous people
(with high levels of nitrates) do not cause harm to the society
and to nature. All physical health problems also clean the body
of nitrates and thus prevent behavioural problems. Suppressing the
symptoms of diseases only results in increase in the behavioural
problems that we see today.
9 How to assess the overall status of the society? By noting which
books, TV channel programs or movies gets popular in a society,
one can arrive at the overall picture of pollution. A movie becomes
popular only when people relate it to their feelings and these in
turn, are related to the pollution levels. “Hum Aapke Hain
Kaun” or “Lagaan” getting popular indicates a
healthy society, which is why, the government reduces the entertainment
tax on these movies. A violent movie getting popular is not a good
sign. The officers of the Pollution Control Boards should be encouraged
to see the popular movies as a part of their office duty, to help
them monitor environmental pollution!
10 Consumption of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, too, is linked
to nitrates in the environment.
6
Sound Pollution: It is found that people enjoy higher
decibels of sound as their nitrate level increases in lower band..
One can thus use sound level as a biosensor for monitoring nitrate
levels. The wattage of the sound system may be used as a measure
of the sound level, instead of the decibel level, which requires
special instruments.
7
Pollution of Organics: Solid organic wastes or wastewaters,
both create pollution due to the nitrates. Faulty food production
system, for example, use of chemical fertlisers, pollutes the food
with nitrates. This food is bad for human health and nature destroys
this food only to protect our health. Garbage and sewage arising
out of such food will have nitrates. Garbage and sewage create odour,
pathogen and pest problems only to indicate the nitrate problem.
The treatment of garbage and sewage, thus, should focus on removal
of nitrates rather than on organics. Organics are food for the soil
and thus serve as organic fertlisers. These must be conserved to
reduce the necessity of chemical fertlisers. Chemical fertlisers
cause excess nitrate levels in the crop and pests come to consume
the nitrate-rich food. Fighting the pests with pesticides only results
in the production of food, that is polluted with nitrates and pesticides.
One can monitor the garbage quality by noting which animal is eating
the garbage. Cows will eat garbage with lowest nitrates and cow
products (milk, dung and urine) are free of nitrates. This is the
reason why the cow is considered a holy animal in our culture. Cow
products, in fact, have medicinal value. We use cow dung to plaster
our house, temple and food-storage bins, to ensure a healthy atmosphere.
Now processed cow urine has been patented in the USA (see patent
no. 6,410,059 B1 at http://www.uspto.com/)
to increase the efficacy of antibiotics. Processing is necessary
now because of the environmental pollution. If pigs are seen to
prosper, it indicates spoilage of the food quality. If rats are
seen in garbage dumps, it is more serious. Rats are not a problem
in themselves; they are reducing the nitrates in the garbage. When
the nitrates are higher than what they can tolerate, they start
dying of plague. Plague also kills humans with high nitrates. Rats
are not the cause of plague, but are victims of plague. Plague is
caused by very high levels of nitrates in garbage/food/sewage. Incidences
of plague were found in India for 40 years, at the beginning of
this century. It used to be active only during October and November
when the high temperature after the monsoon rains caused the nitrates
to act. Why is it that plague is not so common these days? This
is because human excreta, that used to be a part of garbage, in
the old days, finds its place in sewage now. Plague, thus has been
cleverly controlled by using drinking water to flush human excreta
into rivers and lakes that supply our drinking water. Our water
bodies now breed mosquitoes (aquatic rats) and mosquitoes die of
malaria and dengue. Cause is again nitrates! A healthy water body
is characterized by fish which convert nitrates into food. A polluted
water body breeds frogs or ordinary mosquitoes. These have no food
value, but warn us with sound or biting during the night. Mosquitoes
are very selective in their biting habits. They only bite people
with high nitrate levels! These people are potentially dangerous
to the society! Mosquitoes, in fact, purify our blood by increasing
blood turnover, a costly way indeed! Mosquito bites can be avoided
by drinking water purified with SUJALA BIOSANITIZER. Malaria and
dengue mosquitoes breed in water that has nitrates but has poor
energy sources (organics). Rainwater and secondary-treated sewage
are good media for breeding of malaria/dengue mosquitoes. These
mosquitoes bite people in the violence band, that too, during the
day. Using SUJALA BIOSANITIZER can prevent the firefighting services
of these mosquitoes.
It
thus, should be noted that aim of organic waste management should
be to increase the food (nontoxic organics)/nitrate ratio. The table
below shows the aquatic biosensors and their food/nitrate ratios.
Pathogens grow if this ratio is less than 30.
Biosensor
in Water
|
Food/Nitrate
Ratio |
Indication |
Fish/Prawn
|
More than
200
|
Food is
the award |
Frogs |
200 - 100 |
Sound warning
during night |
Ordinary
mosquitoes
|
100 - 30
|
Biting
during night |
Malaria
mosquitoes
|
30 - 10 |
Severe
warning |
Dengue
mosquitoes
|
10 - 0 |
Most severe
warning |
8 Let us now discuss aquatic weeds such as water hyacinth. These grow
if the food/nitrate ratio is from 30 to 10. Water hyacinth actually
helps clean the water body by removing the nitrates and reducing
mosquito breeding. If the dense growth of water hyacinth is not
harvested regularly, the speed of nitrate removal becomes slow and
ordinary mosquitoes start breeding. It is non-harvesting of water
hyacinth, not the water hyacinth itself, which causes mosquito breeding.
Below food/nitrate ratio of 10, water hyacinth cannot grow in the
water bodies. One sees production of toxic compounds such as hydrogen
sulfide and mercaptans, a problem more severe than the pathogens.
9 It should be noted that conventional methods of organic waste management
actually reduce the food/nitrate ratio by burning away food molecules
and contributing to global warming. The resultant material also
becomes a better medium for pathogen growth. Composting does destroy
the pathogens due to the temperature rise, but the same compost
can re-grow the pathogens after it cools down.
10 Hospital waste is incinerated to destroy the pathogens. This compounds
the problem by producing more nitrogen oxides from the proteins
that are invariably present in the hospital waste. Incinerators
that burn hospital waste and dead bodies, actually contribute to
production of toxic rain (with nitrates) that produces higher number
of patients in the society. SUJALA BIOSANITIZER has been used to
sanitize the hospital waste and produce manure that is free of the
pathogens. The system has been monitored by the Dept. of Microbiology
of B J Medical College, Pune, for the past four years.
11
Air Pollution: Major source of air pollution is
burning of fossil fuels, biogas and producer gas. These fuels are
produced in polluted environment and need to be processed first
with SU-JWALA BIOSANITIZER before they could be used.
Visible
smoke indicates a low band of air pollution. More serious is the
higher band that produces less smoke and higher amount of oxides
of nitrogen and sulfur. The exhaust appears clean, but actually
is more dangerous. Use of biogas, producer gas, LPG and CNG is considered
safe, but is actually more hazardous from this point of view. The
Asian Brown Cloud, actually indicates low band pollution, as compared
to Europe and North American sky that has invisible high band pollution.
Major contribution of air pollution is from the developed countries
that use higher per capita and also absolute quantity of fossil
fuels. Traditional fuels such as cowdung pats, firewood, ghee, vegetable
oils and candles made from natural fat are cleaner fuels. Cleanest
of all are ghee and cowdung pats prepared from desi (brahmin) cow.
These, in fact, clean the polluted air, like smoke produced during
traditional yadnyas.
12
Rain Pollution: Rain gets polluted after falling
through polluted air. Rainfall is regular (good for agriculture
in terms of quality and distribution) only when the air pollution
is mild. At higher air pollution (higher levels of oxides of C,
N, S, etc.), rain becomes irregular, with peaks of high and low
rain, with large gaps. This is bad for agriculture and also causes
floods and dry periods. With excessive air pollution, rain just
gets reduced. One can thus monitor the band of air quality from
the rainfall pattern. In the ideal condition of no air pollution,
again there will be no rain. How would we survive then? Plants grow
very fast in healthy air, producing more water than what they need.
This water contributes to the groundwater. Springs flow round the
year and this keeps rivers flowing round the year. Water vapour
in air also produces dew during the night. This can be a good source
of water. One can note that rain does disturb our routine and thus
gives us a warning signal about air pollution. Increasing nitrogen
oxides in air produces nitrate-rich rain that in turn produces malaria.
The word “malaria” means “bad air” and presents
a better picture than the common belief that “mosquitoes cause
malaria – that gave a Nobel to Sir Ronald Ross”. Polluted
nitrate-rich rain also does not seep into the ground readily, a
natural mechanism to protect the groundwater quality. We then have
to spend on digging trenches in the ground, bunding the nallas,
constructing dams and collecting rain on the roofs. Henceforth we
should focus on nitrate levels in water. In fact, roof water harvesting
was discontinued in many areas because of high nitrate levels. One
way to control air pollution is to use SU-JWALA BIOSANITIZER in
the fuel tank. This is a natural catalyst that gives 20 percent
higher mileage/pick-up and produces clean exhaust. It also reduces
heating, corrosion and maintenance problems.
13
Water Pollution: Water gets polluted primarily due
to inorganics. Mild level of pollution is indicated to us by turbidity.
Second level is indicated by presence and growth of pathogens. Third
level is indicated by presence of toxic compounds. At the fourth
level, water has so much of inorganics that there is no warning,
water becomes unusable for drinking and for agriculture. Seawater
is one example. After knowing this one can see how using alum/polyelectrolyte
to control turbidity and use of chlorine to kill the pathogens,
actually increases water pollution. One can use SUJALA BIOSANITIZER
to solve all sorts of water quality problems and get water that
becomes an asset for drinking, cleaning and for agriculture.
14
Natural Calamities: Cyclones result when nitrates
are wasted into the sea. The message is that nitrates should not
be allowed in water. They can produce 100 times higher food on land
than in water. Food in river (fish), at least, can be captured without
much energy expenditure. Capturing fish from the deep sea involves
more expenditure than the energy in fish. Nature gives us this warning
through the cyclones. The Orissa cyclone was near the Paradeep Port
where the Maha River meets the sea, pouring nitrates into the sea.
Earthquakes and volcanoes are due to reaction of nitrates (in groundwater)
and the rock, building up the pressure that causes these calamities.
15
Conclusion: One can learn to read the “books
of nature” and solve the problems facing mankind. Our biology
is different from that in the developed world and hence they are
not in the best position to solve our problems. In fact, not knowing
the hazards of burning polluted fuels such as coal, petrol and diesel,
the developed countries spoiled the world atmosphere. We suffered
more because of high temperature. This is why the nitrate hazards
were not discovered in the West. Sir Alfred Nobel used the nitrate
chemistry to develop the explosives, without realizing the bad effect
on air. Explosives helped mining of coal and oil. British could
rule India only because of the guns. Nobel prizes also decided the
path for scientific research. It is time now, to understand the
nitrate chemistry with respect to life, control the greed and terrorism
that is due to nitrates and develop peaceful life that satisfies
the genuine needs of all and greed of none. Biosanitizers should
be of help in this pursuit.
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