Pakistan’s Lifeline
On the southern side of Lahore, in the once might Ravi River which flows in muted silence. Once a source of life and livelihoods, its waters are more and more a sludge of industrial chemicals, moving slowly. The air clings to the stench and the
water turns just short of black. Every day, some 540 industrial units are reported to discharge untreated effluents into this river per the Ravi Commission report filed with the Lahore High Court in 2022. And the Ravi is not alone.
Industrial wastewater is being dumped unchecked across Pakistan, turning the crisis into a silent national emergency: Of poisoning water sources, threatening public health, and even weakening an already weakened ecosystem (Ministry of Climate Change, 2022). Headlines tend to focus on water scarcity or inefficient irrigation but it is the otherwise hidden, insidious, deeply systemic wastewater crisis that keeps ravaging on, largely unnoticed and undelayed.
The Hidden Contaminants: Industrial Wastewater and its Lethal Trail At the centre of Pakistan’s economic engine — its major industrial centres like the tanneries in Sialkot, textile mills in Faisalabad and chemical plants in Karachi.
However, there is an uncomfortable truth that lies behind their productivity. Categorizing these industries as discharging millions of liters of untreated or poorly treated wastewater with daily incidence is appropriate. Though these effluent streams are laden with toxic metals like cadmium, chromium and lead, they leach into rivers, canals and even into stagnant aquifer and compromise even the most precious water sources, necessary for household and farmer’s use.
Thanks to the fact that the textile industry is, for example, nearly 60% of the country’s exports, it’s amongst the most resource-intensive (World Bank, 2020). The water usage pattern in Pakistan for producing one kilogram of cotton fabric is as high as 300 liters, which include not only processing but also dyeing and finishing, using hazardous chemical dyes, reported the World Bank in its 2020 report on South region’s water usage. Chemicals such as these are flushed into the environment; they aren’t treated with effluent.
Arsenic and mercury dangerously high in groundwater near industrial clusters in Sindh and Punjab: Pakistan Journal of Environmental Sciences These toxins are related to skin lesions neurological disorders and increased cancer risks (Khan & Shaheen, 2021). The same study showed children living within 5 km of the sites had more than 40 per cent of children having symptoms suggestive of long term heavy metal exposure (Khan & Shaheen, 2021).
Written By: Muhammad Abdul Hadi khan