Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 27 October 2013
Indian environmental activist Sunita Narain was seriously injured while cycling in New Delhi last Sunday, October 20.
She was hit by a car while on her daily cycling run near Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. She suffered fractures on both her arms and her nose, and underwent nine hours of surgery. She is currently recovering. The car had fled without stopping.
This news was particularly shocking as Sunita is an old friend — and alarming because she has been at the forefront calling for safer and healthier cities in South Asia.
“Cyclists in Indian cities are being edged out systematically to make way for cars – sometimes literally so,” said a statement from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the independent research and advocacy group that Sunita heads.
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I discuss the public health implications of rising levels of pesticide residues in our food. I cite research by the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI) on pesticide use habits of upcountry vegetable and potato farmers, which makes alarming reading.
Among other things, researchers found that up to a quarter of surveyed farmers grow some chemicals-free vegetables their own use! So this is not a matter of ignorance, but willful poisoning of the unsuspecting consumer.
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I discuss how Nelson Mandela was a master communicator in terms of public speaking skills, media relations and strategy.
Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 20 October 2013
Chamara Pahalawattage had just turned 18 when we met him in early 2009. By then, he was already into his sixth mobile phone.
An only child raised by a widowed mother, Chamara — a resident of Gonapola, in Sri Lanka’s western province — developed an interest in mobiles while in his mid teens. He bought his first mobile at 16.
Since then, he tried to keep up with technology by buying second-hand phones with better features: he’d paid LKR 7,500 (US$ 65 at the time) for his latest only a few weeks earlier. Besides voice and SMS (texting), his phone supported MP3, video recording, song downloading, voice recording and other functions.
After leaving school, Chamara started assisting at construction sites. The enterprising young man boosted his chances of work by spreading his…
News feature written for Ceylon Today newspaper, 19 Oct 2013
Air Pollution causes cancer, confirms WHO
By Nalaka Gunawardene
Air pollution causes cancer, it is now medically confirmed.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just classified outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic to humans.
Exposure to air pollution can cause cancer in lungs, and also increase the risk of cancer in the bladder, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of WHO, announced this week.
Close to a quarter million people already die every year from lung cancer caused by air pollution, WHO estimates.
In a statement, IARC said: “After thoroughly reviewing the latest available scientific literature, the world’s leading experts convened by the IARC Monographs Programme concluded that there is sufficient evidence that exposure to outdoor air pollution causes lung cancer (Group 1).”
They also noted a “positive association” with an increased risk of bladder cancer.
Depending on the level of exposure in different parts of the world, the risk was found to be similar to that of breathing in second-hand tobacco smoke.
“The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” says Dr Kurt Straif, Head of the IARC Monographs Section that ranks carcinogens. “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.”
Particulate matter — tiny pieces of solid or liquid matter floating in the air, and a major component of outdoor air pollution– was evaluated separately and was also classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1).
Outdoor air pollution – emitted mostly by transport, thermal power generation, industrial and agricultural activities — is already known to cause a range of respiratory and heart diseases. In Sri Lanka, more than 60% comes from vehicles burning petrol and diesel fuel.
The IARC Monographs Programme, dubbed the “encyclopaedia of carcinogens”, provides an authoritative source of scientific evidence on cancer-causing substances and exposures.
IARC adds substances, mixtures and exposure circumstances to Group 1 only when there is sufficient evidence of cancer-causing ability (carcinogenicity) in humans.
The link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer has long been established but now focus is on other cancer-causing air pollutants. In June 2012, IARC declared that diesel engine fumes can certainly cause cancer, especially lung cancer, and upgraded it to Group 1. Earlier, diesel fumes were in group 2A of probable carcinogens for over two decades.
“Classifying outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic to humans is an important step,” says IARC Director Dr Christopher Wild. “There are effective ways to reduce air pollution and, given the scale of the exposure affecting people worldwide, this report should send a strong signal to the international community to take action without further delay.”
Although the composition of air pollution and levels of exposure can vary dramatically between locations, the conclusions of the IARC Working Group apply to all regions of the world.
Air pollution is a basket term, which covers dozens of individual chemical compounds and particulates. These vary around the world due to differences in the sources of pollution, climate and weather. But IARC now confirms that the mixtures of ambient air pollution “invariably contain specific chemicals known to be carcinogenic to humans”.
It is only in recent years that the true magnitude of the disease burden due to air pollution has been quantified. According to WHO, exposure to ambient fine particles contributed 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2010. Much of this was due to heart disease triggered by bad air, but 223 000 deaths were from lung cancer.
More than half of the lung cancer deaths attributable to ambient fine particles are believed to have been in China and other East Asian countries.
In the past, IARC evaluated many individual chemicals and specific mixtures that occur in outdoor air pollution. These included diesel engine exhaust, solvents, metals, and dusts. But this is the first time that experts have classified outdoor air pollution as a cause of cancer.
IARC Monographs are based on the independent review of hundreds of scientific papers from studies worldwide. In this instance, studies analysed the carcinogenicity of various pollutants present in outdoor air pollution, especially particulate matter and transportation-related pollution.
The evaluation was driven by findings from large epidemiological studies that included millions of people living in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. A summary is to be published in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology online on 24 October 2013.
Air Pollution causes cancer, Ceylon Today, 19 Oct 2013
Article published in Ceylon Today newspaper on 17 Oct 2013:
Send Your Name to the Stars!
By Nalaka Gunawardene
Would you like to send your name to the stars – as part of a message from humanity to alien beings out there?
It could be as easy as signing an online petition, addressed to the US space agency NASA.
A worldwide group of starry-eyed people – drawn from all walks of life, all sharing an interest in space exploration — are hoping to persuade NASA to include a message to the stars aboard its New Horizons spacecraft, now on its way to Pluto.
The New Horizons Message Initiative (NHMI), a private organization, started collecting online signatures in mid September. Within three weeks, more than a thousand people from 70 different nations had joined. www.newhorizonsmessage.com
If the petition succeeds, and NASA agrees, the names of the first 10,000 people signatories will be added to a message intended for extra-terrestrials, or ETs.
New Horizons, launched in January 2006, is currently about 5 billion (3 billion miles) kilometres away from Earth, en route to a historic encounter with Pluto and its moons. If all goes to plan, the robotic spacecraft would flyby Pluto in July 2015.
Afterwards, the compact car sized probe will head out into deep space, becoming the fifth human-made spacecraft to leave the solar system. It follows four earlier, US-made spacecraft — Pioneers 10 and 11, and Voyagers 1 and 2. Alllaunched during the 1970s, they have completed their various planetary flybys and are now travelling onward in interstellar space.
Each of those probes carried a message from Earth to any ETs who might someday encounter them: a gold-plated visual plaque on the Pioneers, and a phonograph record on the Voyagers.
There is no such message as yet on New Horizons, which is what NHMI wants to introduce, albeit belatedly.
It’s not too late, NHMI’s backers believe, to persuade NASA to beam and upload a message to the spacecraft’s memory, after it completes the Pluto encounters.
Crowd-sourced message
The proposal for a new interstellar message came from artist Jon Lomberg, possibly the world’s most experienced creator of space message artefacts. As (astronomer and space populariser) Carl Sagan’s frequent artistic collaborator, Lomberg served as Design Director for the Voyager Golden Records, which contain a stunning array of sights and sounds of Earth.
Unlike the Pioneer and Voyager messages, which were created by small, select teams working with Sagan, the NHMI wants to involve interested persons anywhere in the world. The global Internet – which wasn’t available when the earlier messages were assembled – enables such wide participation.
Using techniques of web-based crowd-sourcing, the content of the message is to be shaped jointly by scientists, artists, writers and ordinary people who share an interest in this important enterprise.
Lomberg has assembled an international team of advisors to oversee the creation of a worldwide, crowd-sourced self-portrait of Earth, consisting of pictures, sounds and even software from our planet.
“As scientists, academics and interested parties working in other fields, we believe that this message is an inspiring idea that offers opportunities for public engagement and the stimulation of interest in science, engineering and exploration by a new generation,” says a statement from the NHMI founders and advisors.
But first, the citizen initiative must secure acceptance from NASA that owns and operates the spacecraft. NHMI Project Director Lomberg hopes that thousands of signatures — coming from far corners of the planet — would make their case more compelling.
In recognition of early support, the first ten thousand to sign will have their names added to the as-yet-uncreated message.
“It will be a nice slice of immortality for early supporters of the initiative,” says Lomberg. “The spacecraft will sail forever around the galaxy, and your name can go with it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The message, prepared with creative and technical inputs from many, could be beamed on to the spacecraft’s computer as a radio transmission across the solar system.
To sign the petition and for more information about the project, visit:
I met the Lankan scholar, science writer and social activist Dr E W Adikaram (1905-1985) only twice, during the last few weeks of his life, but those encounters left a lasting impression.
Trained in both sciences and the humanities, he was a rare public intellectual with the courage of his convictions to speak out on matters of public interest — even when such views challenged widely held dogmas or went against populist trends. As a sceptical inquirer as well as a spiritualist, he always ‘walked his talk’.
A versatile communicator in Sinhala and English, Adikaram conducted regular radio programmes, delivered thousands of talks across the island, and wrote dozens of pamphlets and booklets on practical as well as spiritual topics – all delivered in simple and lucid language.
As a pioneering science writer in Sinhala, he edited and published popular science magazines. In all this, his hallmark was the spirit of inquiry and courteous engagement.
Among his most memorable pieces was an essay titled “Isn’t the Nationalist a Mental Patient?” Its original Sinhala version was published in the Sunday newspaper Silumina in 1958. As he recalled many years later, “It was a strange coincidence that this article first appeared in print just a couple of days before the outbreak of the sad conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils in 1958.”
I have just shared this important essay online, with a new annotation.
Long before Malala, there was another spirited young girl named Meena.
Like Malala Yousafzai does today, Meena too spoke out for and on behalf of girls — their right to education, good health, nutrition and, most important, to be treated the same way as boys.
Like Malala, young Meena too spoke passionately yet courteously. While Malala challenged the ferocious Taliban, Meena took on the equally formidable adversary named tradition.
Malala and Meena could well have been sisters in arms — except that the latter isn’t quite real. She is a cartoon character imagined and developed by some of South Asia’s most talented animators and development communicators two decades ago.
UNICEF developed the Meena Communication Initiative (MCI) as a mass communication project aimed at changing perceptions and behaviour that hamper the survival, protection and development of girls in South Asia.
Here’s how their website describes Meena:
“Meena is a cartoon character from South Asia. She is a spirited, nine-year-old girl who braves the world – whether in her efforts to go to school or in fighting the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in her village.”
UNICEF launched Meena in September 1998 after eight years of extensive research in the region since the initial conceptualization. The name Meena was carefully chosen as it was found to span the different cultures in the region: people in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka could relate to the name.
A cast of carefully researched characters was created for Meena’s family and community. It included Meena’s talkative pet parrot Mithu, brother Raju, mom and dad, grandma and village school teacher.
There was no fundamentalist group threatening Meena’s village. Instead, it was grappling with poverty, ignorance and orthodoxy.
The Meena stories are entertaining and fun, but also reflect the realities of girls’ lives in South Asia. Through story-telling, important social messages are conveyed, such as the value of educating girls, freedom from exploitation and abuse, need for hygiene and proper sanitation, and the right of girls to a proper childhood not marred by under-age marriages.
In total, 13 Meena episodes were produced through a collaboration that involved Ram Mohan Studios of Mumbai and Hanna-Barbera affiliate Fil Cartoons of Manila.
Three examples:
Meena: Will Meena Leave School?
Meena: Count Your Chickens
Meena: Too Young to Marry
Meena is widely recognised and appreciated in most South Asian countries, and is a successful advocacy and teaching tool for girls’ and children’s rights. The Meena figure has achieved remarkable popularity as she tackles the key issues affecting children, and the threats to the rights of millions of girls in South Asia.
This Hague based inter-governmental organisation was recognised for implementing — through inspections, destruction and by other means — the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty in effect from 1997 and singed by 165 countries.
In the past, the Norwegian Nobel Committee – which administers the Prize — has through several prizes highlighted the need to eliminate nuclear weapons as well as landmines. With the 2013 decision, it has lent support to the global campaign to end the production and use of chemical weapons.
There were 259 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize 2013, 50 of them organizations. These included the Pakistani schoolgirl activist
My latest Ravaya column (in Sinhala) is about the promise and challenges of 3D printing technology.
Sri Lanka took many years to come to terms with colour copiers and printers in 2D. For a while, they were not even allowed. This time around, regulating 3D printing will be harder — and there won’t be as much time to endlessly ponder what to do.
Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog) 