Feature Article

Commuters' exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) especially BTEX travelling in passenger cars in Kolkata, India were quantified in Phase I (2001–2002) and Phase II (2003–2004). Monitoring was made inside and in the immediate outside of passenger cars fitted with and without catalytic converters using different types of fuels, along two congested urban routes.

Contamination of chromium is considered a serious environmental pollutant due to wide industrilization. The two largest sources of chromium emission in the atmosphere are from the chemical manufacturing industry and combustion of natural gas, oil and coal. 2007

By requiring the government to place more and more information in the public domain, the Right to Information Act, 2005 has raised the confidence of civil society organizations in India to enter into partnerships with government. This was evident e at Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, where a consortium of NGOs tied up in August 2006 with the state government to monitor the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme.

With Burundi, a small east African country, emerging from a 13-year-long civil war, more than 400,000 refugees have started returning home. Its newly elected government now faces the daunting task of

German automaker BMW has announced the launching of its prototype Hydrogen 7, the world's first luxury car powered by liquid hydrogen. The vehicles will be manufactured in a European country. A

• Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo has reinstated three senior civil servants, suspended for their involvement in the dumping of toxic wastes around the capital city of Abidjan, in September

The influenza virus can survive for thousands of years in frozen lakes and might be picked up and carried by birds to reinfect animals and people. After their release, these viruses can cause new

Noxious fumes from chemical wastes dumped into a river in the town of Marilao in the Philippines, forced thousands of residents to flee their homes in the last week of November. Residents