Gas leak keeps GPCB guessing

SURAT, Nov 17: A team of the Central Pollution Control Board CPCB, armed with special cartridges to detect the mysterious gas leak in the ...

SURAT, Nov 17: A team of the Central Pollution Control Board CPCB, armed with special cartridges to detect the mysterious gas leak in the city, arrived in here on Tuesday evening to assist the Gujarat Pollution Control Board GPCB personnel who have failed to identify the gas that has been leaking or being deliberately released8217; during the past fortnight.

GPCB officials said although they had been carrying out checks and inspections on a daily basis, the special instruments used to detect ethyl mercapton had crossed their expiry date and it was not possible to take samples. These are being brought from Mumbai, the officials said on Tuesday.

The GPCB officials contended that they had Komyo company tubes from Japan to identify the gas leakage, but their expiry dates had been lapsed. They have, however, placed stationary instrument at four different places in the city, which have been of no use as they could not detect either the gas or its origin.

8220;Identification of the gas is now our top priority and the local officials are in right direction,8221; the CPCB zonal officer Dr S S Bala told Express Newsline. He is accompanied by environment engineers P K Birashe and Keyur Shah and scientist Dr Uttpal Mukherjee from the Vadodara-based zonal office of the CPCB.

The Dager tubes will, however, be able to detect only ethyl mercapton 8212; which is suspected of being left. The CPCB officials said based on the description provided by the local officials, the gas could be ethyl mercapton along with some hydrocarbons and hydrogen sulphide. They admitted a failure on part of the board in not even categorically identifying the gas that is leaking in parts of the city. As of now 8212; a full fortnight after the first leakage was experienced 8212; the gas is still unidentified, tracing the source still a distant proposition.

Bala said the CPCB officials would conduct an environmental audit but the safety audit as well as process audit would have to be done by the local officials. Only after the identification of the gas it would be possible to trace the source of origin, the CPCB officials felt. This sharply brings into focus claims made by the GPCB that they had been conducting inspections in different Hazira units, implying that the GPCB officials were groping in the dark until now.

Briefing newspersons at the collectorate, GPCB officials G B Vasavada, senior scientific officer, R V Patel, environmental engineer and R B Trivedi, deputy environmental engineer said that daily monitoring was on and even night checks were being conducted at those industries using ethyl mercapton in the past one week. The officials said that they learnt of the gas leak in the newspapers on November 1. We have been monitoring the Hazira units since then, but have not come against any case where companies are deliberately leaving the gas.