Open tires burning, environmental pollution and health impact

Open burning of vehicle tires on street is becoming a part of life in Nepal. Even for small events, aggressive mass start putting fire on tires to show their yes or no support and put pressure on government. The question of environmental pollution and health impact of such activities has been raised several times but no one has changed this behavior.

Open tire fire emissions include carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur oxides (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It also includes hazardous air pollutants such as polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, furans, hydrogen chloride, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The tire burning emission also releases heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, nickel, zinc, mercury, chromium, and vanadium. People exposed to such emissions show symptoms of skin, eyes, and mucous membranes irritation, lungs and respiratory problems, central nervous system depression, and cancer. In a long run people may start showing mutagenic effects and higher number of cancer cases. In terms of mutagenic effects, open tire fires emissions are 16 times more dangerous than residential wood burning and 13,000 times than coal-fired emissions.

May be we will start stopping lighting the tires only we experience such effects ourselves but that will be too late to act on. (Information source: http://www.elaw.org/node/2764; Pictures by blogger)

A picture from United World Trade Centre

United World Trade Centre (UWTC) is said to be the largest shopping complex at Tripureshwor, Kathmandu, Nepal. The complex is spread over 5,596.11 square meters area and built in a leased-land owned by Tribhuvan University with the total investment of Rs 500 million rupees. The complex provides a number of services like department stores, cyber café, party palace, health club, and heated swimming pool. Last week, I could visit the building and had snacks at roof top restaurant of it. The picture is from the same roof showing Tripureshowr round about. National stadium, Dasharat rangashala, is just behild the two big hoarding boards in the picture.

Uncontrolled traffic system of Kathmandu

The traffic system of Kathmandu is really terrible. No matter how safe you drive, you could face accident due to others fault. Road rules are not cared by anyone. Larger vehicles try to dominate small vehicles and so on ultimately making the trouble to pedestrians. Traffic tried to established lane system with concrete slabs but they seems to be obstruction for drive and threat to live during night. Pressure horns are legally not allowed but almost all bus and trucks blow even near hospital and schools areas. Passengers also use bus and truck hoods for 'safe' journey. If driver pay some money to traffic, they don't care punishing them. Haphazard parking and turns are normal at any place and any time.

People can put illegal shops even under bridge obstructing the vehicle movement. Now, the roads are also a place to show all grievances. People demonstrate putting fire on tires on road. The reason could be either road accidents or political regression and/or support. Because of these all huddles, I think you can drive any part of the world if can drive in the street of Kathmandu. Here are some scenes of Kathmandu roads.

Traffic jam due to political demonstration 'Ranke julus'

Effect of load shedding on television broadcast

I was experiencing 16 hours of load shedding so it was difficult to update with recent news on television in normal hours. Hence, whenever the power comes in, I used to wakeup and turn on the television. Some days back, it was early morning around 4:00 AM, I saw strange notice of ‘No broadcast due to load shredding’ on most of the Nepali channels. When I explored the news, I came to know that there were more than five Nepali television channels broadcasting 24 hours. They were highly affected due to load shredding for the production, advertisement management and broadcasting the programs. Because of the same, they recently formed an organization ‘Television Broadcasters Nepal’ and announced ‘Emergency on broadcasting’. They stopped broadcasting 00:00 to 05:00 every day. This was not the prime time of watching television but if they start increasing the time like electricity cut then that will definitely effect our ‘right to information’. Few weeks back government has declared emergency in electricity sector. Let us see who else will declare next ‘emergency’.

Street vendors in Nepal

Open and flee market are traditional way of good exchange and shopping. These trends are decreasing everywhere however increasing in Nepal. Either of clothes, vegetables, fruits, meats, food stalls or household utensils are available in the street market. Traffic jam and inconvenience to pedestrian was one of the major issues due to such markets. Because of the same, the government tried to stop these street vendors but vendors organizational unity and their protest pressurized government to provide them alternative or space in the street itself. What a shame? A group of people are occupying public place (street) for their business (profit motive) and government is helpless. Here are some of the pictures showing how street vendors do their business.

Windows in a matchbox

When I went to a shop to buy a matchbox, I got a nice matchbox printed with popular logo – ‘Windows’. To my knowledge, Windows was a registered trademark of Microsoft Company associated with computer software. I did not find any connection with the computer software and matchbox but the logo was nicely printed. I do not think that the matchbox is advertising the software company because the matchbox also consists of its company name and address. However, the matchbox logo was missing ‘R’ in a circle. You can see the nice matchbox yourself.

Fruits and fruit cakes

Fruits are source of vitamins, minerals and other elements. They are essential food components of human. However, all types of fruits are not available at a time since they are seasonal and production differ on climatic and altitudinal variations. I could enjoy variety of fruits and fruit cake which I would like to share with you here. Enjoy it.