The capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is a killer city and shows no sign of letting up on its homicidal spree. Every day, newspapers report of one death or another as people fall to everything from bullets, berserk trucks, to less prosaic ones like slum fires. Nevertheless, such a dangerous place has not deterred a high migration rate to the city from the rest of the country. Either the state of life in Dhaka has not been well advertised or it's really much worse out there.
And Dhaka doesn't just kill people or murder them through conventional mayhem. There is a more dangerous killer at work and one that works at a slow but sure pace: pollution. Air quality has reached a point where parts of Dhaka have deservingly earned the distinction of being among the most lethal places to breathe in the entire world. The only people who seem to be glad about this killer pollution are the mask makers, as hundreds of Dhaka residents go around sporting this useless protection against the foul air; the one thing it does well is hide the citizens' grimaces. The mask is also a symbol of the state of things: the protection the people can access can't save them.
The matter most deserving of attention, lead pollution, has been there for years and the cause is known to all. The imported petroleum, used primarily by autorickshaws, is of a cheap variety and has extremely high lead content. It is sold in the market under the label of "octane" without being detoxified. The "autos" use two-stroke engines which spew large volumes of lead into the air. There were protests aplenty, but nothing was done for long. Not even when medical evidence was presented by doctors and activists to show that children and adults were being seriously affected by lead poisoning.
Apparently few are bothered by the mortality and morbidity caused by this pollution. There is no scope for legal relief, and far worse, other pollutants may be lurking around the corner. Hacking down tress, destroying water bodies along with the rivers that keep Dhaka going, and the filling up of the city's natural canal system to provide for much-indemand housing, are the stuff of nightmares. These are no secrets and by repeating them, one runs the risk of sounding not concerned, but banal