“Options at Doongerwadi”

Whilst acknowledging that ozone is a hazardous and toxic gas, Mehernosh Behram-Kamdin has stated that it is nonetheless used in home air purifiers in the developed countries ("Options at Doon­­ger­wadi,” Readers’ Forum, Par­siana, October 2001).

Several questions remain to be answered: A recent article by Sanyal, Chakraborty and Sinha states that almost all vegetables and crops including tomato, barley, onion, potato, soyabean, tobacco, wheat, cotton, lettuce, rice, beet, cabbage, carrot, peas, etc, are deleteriously affected by ozone concentrations as low as 0.05 to 0.10 p.p.m. (parts per million of gas sample by volume) within a few hours (Science Reporter, August 2001).

We know that many medicines are scrapped after observing long-term deleterious side effects.

What are the long-term effects of exposure to ozone? Has the Bombay Parsi Punchayet made any study or enquiry about the long-term ill effects of exposure to ozone before falling headlong into ozone injection in dakhmas involving a capital expenditure of Rs 15 lakhs and daily operating costs of Rs 200 ("Prepare for improvement,” Parsiana, August 2001) when effective and efficient time-tested electric crematoria could have been installed for similar costs?

Dr P. D. SUNAVALA