NEW DELHI: India has spent more than five decades building a robust environmental regulatory framework. The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, together with rules governing hazardous waste, plastics, biomedical waste, e-waste and solid waste, have created one of the world’s most comprehensive environmental governance systems.
These laws established the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), accredited laboratories, nationwide monitoring networks, environmental clearance mechanisms and the National Green Tribunal.
Still, polluted rivers, deteriorating urban air, contaminated groundwater, overflowing landfills and emerging contaminants continue to threaten public health, biodiversity and economic productivity. The challenge, therefore, is no longer merely one of legislation but of scientific transformation.
During my career as an environmental scientist, I participated in investigations of rivers, lakes, groundwater, industrial belts, cities, agricultural landscapes and ecologically sensitive regions throughout India.
Every monitoring programme followed rigorous scientific protocols. Sampling sites were carefully selected, instruments calibrated, samples preserved according to standard procedures, and laboratory analyses performed using nationally and internationally accepted methods.
We measured hundreds of physical, chemical and biological parameters in water, air and soil.
Like many environmental scientists, I believed that accurate measurements would inevitably lead to better environmental protection. Gradually, an unsettling question emerged. Even when monitoring data met regulatory standards, ecosystems often continued to decline.
Rivers that appeared chemically acceptable supported fewer fish. Agricultural soils lost biological vitality despite satisfactory nutrient status.
Respiratory diseases persisted even when individual pollutants occasionally remained within permissible limits. Wildlife populations declined without obvious explanations from routine monitoring.
The measurements were scientifically sound, but they frequently failed to explain the broader ecological reality. Based on my experience, it may be mentioned that environmental quality cannot always be inferred from chemical concentrations alone.
Traditional monitoring was designed to answer a specific question: What is the concentration of a known pollutant at a particular place and time?
Today’s environmental challenges demand a different question: How do multiple environmental exposures interact over years or decades to influence the health of people, wildlife and ecosystems?
These are fundamentally different scientific questions requiring fundamentally different scientific approaches. Pollution has become more complex, diffuse and intertwined with urbanisation, industrial diversification, climate change and changing patterns of consumption.
Conventional monitoring continues to focus largely on pollutants such as particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, biochemical oxygen demand, heavy metals and many more.
These are crucial indicators, but they no longer represent the complete environmental picture.
Modern science has identified additional threats, including microplastics, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceutical residues, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, nanomaterials and thousands of previously uncharacterised compounds occurring at extremely low concentrations.
Their cumulative impacts on ecosystems and human health remain only partially understood.
Addressing these challenges requires analytical capabilities, predictive tools and interdisciplinary science far beyond the scope envisaged when India’s pollution control institutions were created. One of the greatest lessons from decades of environmental monitoring is that organisms integrate exposure over time in ways that environmental samples cannot.
Fish accumulate contaminants through food webs. Soil microorganisms respond continuously to changing chemical conditions.
Plants alter their metabolism in response to pollutants, drought and pathogens simultaneously. Human beings are exposed not to one pollutant but to a lifetime of complex mixtures through air, water, food, occupation, household products, medicines, climate and social conditions.
The environment is therefore not merely a collection of measurable chemicals but a dynamic network of interacting physical, chemical and biological processes. The limitation, therefore, has not been the commitment or competence of environmental scientists.
Considerable effort has been devoted to improving sampling methods, analytical accuracy, laboratory quality assurance and regulatory compliance. The limitation is conceptual. We have become increasingly proficient at measuring pollutants, yet far less capable of understanding how multiple exposures collectively influence living systems.
This is where exposome science offers a transformative opportunity. Rather than replacing conventional monitoring, it expands its purpose. The exposome considers the totality of environmental exposures experienced throughout life and the biological responses they generate. It shifts the emphasis from asking “How much pollution is present?” to “What is the cumulative environmental burden on ecosystems and people, and how does it alter biological function?”
This approach integrates analytical chemistry with biology, ecology, toxicology, epidemiology and systems science, enabling pollution control to move beyond compliance towards understanding environmental health itself.
India’s environmental future will not be secured by additional regulations alone. It will depend on combining robust monitoring with advanced analytical science, intelligent data systems, exposure assessment and interdisciplinary research. The greatest challenge is no longer the absence of scientific knowledge but the limited translation of emerging science into environmental policy.
As environmental research advances from measuring individual pollutants to understanding cumulative exposures, environmental governance must evolve with equal determination.
Without sustained investment and policy commitment, pollution control may become increasingly efficient at measuring yesterday’s pollutants while remaining inadequately prepared for tomorrow’s environmental risks. The next generation of pollution control must therefore be guided not simply by stronger regulation, but by a deeper scientific understanding of how the environment shapes the health of ecosystems and society. - The Statesman/ANN
