Water pollution News

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The plot twists about a river’s politics [Book Review]

Arti Das 13 Nov 2025
Toxic pollutants from industries on Bellundur lake in Bengaluru, Karnataka. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

How excess rains and poor wastewater management send microplastics into city lakes

T. V. Padma 30 Oct 2025
A dugong swims towards the surface of the waters around Neil island, Andaman and Nicobar. Image by Vardhan Patankar.

Heavy metal bioaccumulation weighs down dugongs

Phalguni Ranjan 14 Oct 2025
Otters painted in the raja gopuram (main tower) of the Thirupudaimaruthur temple, along with wood carvings, serve as the earliest records of otter presence in the region. Image by Maria Anthony.

A village on a river bank shows how community-led river restoration works [Commentary]

Teresa Scholastica Thomas, Sanmadi K.R., I. Santhanamari, M. Mathivanan, M. Soubadra Devy 13 Oct 2025
Plastic pollution along the shores of Bhoj wetland. Image by Manish Chandra Mishra/Mongabay.

Evidence of microplastics in a wetland sparks concern about water security

Manish Chandra Mishra 8 Oct 2025
Achan landfill. Image by Farzana Nisar.

The landfill that ate a wetland

Farzana Nisar 3 Oct 2025
Deepor Beel is Guwahati’s major stormwater storage basin, and is facing stress from unregulated urban runoff. Image by Arnie via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Algal blooms choke a wetland, threatening biodiversity and livelihoods

Barasha Das 29 Sep 2025
Partially bleached coral reefs in the waters near Elephant beach in the Andaman islands. Image by Harvinder Chandigarh via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

India needs a marine litter policy as plastic waste chokes corals

T. V. Padma 19 Sep 2025
A man with a baby in his arms sat on the sculpture of Mother Earth, surrounded by broken plastic toys, bottles, and chairs scattered around. Every day, some more trash was added. Even as the man is seen thinking, Mother Earth, his own body, and the DNA helix above him, were all covered in plastic. Even as plastic has penetrated the foetus-symbolised by the DNA helix, the sea and the mountains, world leaders procrastinate to agree on a solution.

Global talks on plastic pollution end without a treaty

Ravleen Kaur 19 Aug 2025

Milking natural coagulants to fix dairy dirt

Aisiri Amin 6 Aug 2025
Brown Dipper, a specialist Himalayan riverine bird. Dippers are the most studied riverine birds around the world. They are excellent indicators of water quality and riparian conditions. Image by Nilanjan Chatterjee.

A decline in riverine birds signals deeper problems in the Himalayan rivers [Commentary]

Ankita Sinha 14 Jul 2025
A cargo ship at the International Container Transshipment Terminal in Kochi. Representative image by ArulkumarRajamani via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Court orders arrest of sister ship from company responsible for cargo spill

Simrin Sirur 11 Jul 2025
About 50 villages and hamlets along the Jodhpur-Barmer highway have been suffering from the side effects of the pollutants of the Jojari river since 2007. Image by Nirmal Verma/Mongabay.

Toxic water flows, forcing out people and biodiversity

Vishal Kumar Jain 26 Jun 2025
A container washed ashore in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala from the ELSA-3 shipwreck. Some containers that washed to the coast were even seen catching fire in Kollam district. Image by John Bennet.

Shipwreck spills oil, plastic and legal loopholes

Max Martin 12 Jun 2025
A cleanliness drive held in Udupi, Karnataka. Image courtesy of Baeru.

World Environment Day: a rising wave against ocean waste

Saumitra Shinde 5 Jun 2025
Bellandur lake seen from neighbouring residential societies. The decades following the 1970s saw rapid development and encroachment of lakes in the city. By the 2020s, only 183 choking lakes remained. Image by Amol.Gaitonde via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The city of lakes battles a deepening water crisis

Phalguni Ranjan 25 Apr 2025

Industries using cleaner tech, reducing pollution may face fewer regulations

Simrin Sirur 24 Apr 2025
A river heliodor damselfly. Image by Ameya Deshpande.

Damselflies in climate distress

Arathi Menon 4 Apr 2025
marine litter beach vizag

Creating a blueprint for cleaner oceans

T. V. Padma 21 Feb 2025
A government survey reveals nearly a fifth of collected samples exceed permissible pollutant limits, including nitrates and significant quantities of radioactive uranium. Image by SuSanA Secretariat via Flickr (CC-BY-2.0).

Government report highlights groundwater contamination across India

Esha Lohia 8 Jan 2025