It is a paradox of our times that any development is accompanied by environmental degradation. In his quest for wealth and comforts man has ignored Nature’s law and thus disturbed a number of natural cycle: resulting in environmental pollution and health hazards. There are various ways by which our environment gets polluted. Industrial development and its spread is one of the major causes of pollution. lt pollutes the air by releasing smell, smoke, fumes and dust in air, by discharging wastes in rivers, wetlands, realizing many poisonous gases like sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, chlorine, etc. Deforestation too leads to environmental degradation. All these affects the three basic amenities of life, air, water and land and this has serious repercussions on health. Environmental pollution and health hazards are hand in glove with each other. To check these a major effort is required on the part of the administration and the citizens.

Environmental pollution and health hazards caused by it, dates back to the history and progress of the human civilization. Earlier, pollutants in the form of gases, smoke, domestic wastes etc. have given way to a wide variety of industrial waste ranging from toxic gases and heavy metallic oxides to a variety of man made compounds, in the earlier times, the effect of pollution due to ignorance had taken the form of superstitions, the curse of the Almighty. It is only with the emergence of science that the real causes are continuously being identified and the remedial measures are being taken to control the causes and not just its symptoms.

The World Health Organization defines air pollution as the presence of materials in the air that are harmful to man and his environment. Air as we know cannot be bound as compared to a source of water like a pond or a lake which can be isolated and checked. This results in the spread of pollutants over wide areas, sometimes even countries in different continents as was in the case of the Chernobyl accident in the USSR.