People living in and around a special economic zone in Cuddalore are “2,000 times more” likely to be affected by cancer than the normal population, says a report prepared for the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. In a normal sample population, cancer occurs in one person in a million. But in and around the State Industries Promotion Corp of Tamil Nadu known as SIPCOT industrial park nearly 300 km south of Chennai, two in every thousand are likely to have cancer, say anti-pollution campaigners.

The Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) has prepared the report.

The study confirms the decades-old complaints by local residents that pollution from the chemical factories in the park is worst at night, especially in the village of Eachangadu.

The NEERI submitted the report in August 2007 to TNPCB without any public information. It came to light after an RTI plea by the local environment watchdog, Community Environment Monitoring (CEM).

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The NEERI study found that areas near Shasun Chemicals, and the village of Eachangadu, were the worst affected.

Risk levels near Asian Paints and Tagros Chemicals are also high, the report said.

According to the report, children, elderly and the infirm were the most vulnerable. NEERI attributes this to “air transport of pollutants”.

Levels of Benzene - a chemical that causes blood cancer among children - were 125 times higher than safe levels.

Other carcinogens like chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride and trichloroethylene were 881, 553, 32.5 and 21.8 times respectively higher than acceptable levels, the NEERI report said.

NEERI says “the results are a conservative estimate” as “most of the industries are not operating to capacity on days of sampling”.

“If all the industries in the study area function to the full capacity, it may be expected that concentrations of pollutants will increase three-fold,” the institute told TNPCB.

List of Chemicals Detected with Highest Levels Recorded

Name of Chemical	Highest Level (microgram/m3)	Location	Times above safe levels
Benzene	31.174	Asian Paints	125
Carbon tetrachloride	72	Tagros Chemicals	553
Chloroform	74	Shasun	881
Methylene Chloride	133	Tanfac	32.5
Trichloroethylene	24	Aurobindo Chemicals	21.8