Analysis of Environment Protection Act in Context of Hazardous Substances

Industrial revolution has triggered the growth in setting up of the new industries for providing technologically advanced products thereby pushing up Gross Domestic Products, the National Income, employment and bringing a dent in foreign exchange. But in this process of so called development what was forgotten by the nations was preserving the pristine purity of the environment and natural resources especially from the harms of hazardous substances. It took many years, lives of thousands of people, sustained pain and injury, for the nations across the globe to realise that human health and environment could not be compromised to live in the so called developed world. One of the oldest reported instant by BBC was the Flixborough disaster of 1974 in England. India too, witnessed the leak of methyl isocyanate from the Union Carbide India Limited plant called as the Bhopal gas tragedy which took away lives of many and affects the human and animal population even today. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (Japan) which occurred on 11 March 2011 due to melt down of the three of the plant's six nuclear reactors hit by tsunami triggered by an earthquake is another such instance. The plant released substantial amounts of radioactive material increasing the risk of cancer for the people in the vicinity. Though the legislative and judicial wings have been actively engaged in the process of regulating the disasters caused by hazardous substances but such accidents are on a rise calling for appropriate and speedy remedial mechanism for the victims. This paper discusses the understanding of hazardous substances, legislations dealing with regulation of pollution from hazardous substances to remedy the situation, judicial activism to address the issue and the role played by implementation machinery in halting the menace created by operations dealing with hazardous substances