Skip to main content

DRI gets UN award for record seizure of ozone-depleting gas

The Directorate of revenue Intelligence has seized a record over 2.4 lakh kg of ozone-depleting restricted refrigeration gas ‘R-22’, which was being smuggled into the country.

Taking note of its efforts in checking the smuggling of R-22 gas into the country, the DRI has been chosen for a United Nations award.

DRI has registered several cases involving attempted smuggling of ozone-depleting substances and effected seizure of 2,41,463 kgs of R-22 gas in the last year, agency officials said.

The gas, whose import is restricted, was being brought into the country illegally through various means including mis-declaration of good and outright smuggling, they said.

The illegal import of refrigerant 22 gas (R-22), which is used for air-conditioning applications, residential as well as process chillers and industrial refrigerant plants, has been noticed in India.

Smuggling of such ozone depleting substances (ODS), reduces the incentives for users to shift to alternative technologies using ozone-and climate-friendly refrigerants and hence is a matter of concern, the officials said.

The DRI, country’s premier intelligence agency dealing with matters relating to violation of customs law, has been awarded the prestigious ‘ECA Ozone Protection Award for Customs & Enforcement Officers (3rd Edition)’ by UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in recognition of its contribution to enforce the trade provisions applicable to ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol.

Montreal Protocol is a multilateral environmental agreement aimed at restoring ozone layer via strategic management of ozone depleting chemicals.

India, being signatory to the Montreal protocol, is required to phase out consumption and production of ODS chemicals and for which legal framework has been put in place.

Ozone Depleting Substances (Regulation) Rules, 2000 regulates and restricts the import and export of ODS.

The UNEP award aims to provide incentive and recognition to customs and enforcement organisations and its officers, who succeed in preventing illegal or unwanted trade in ODS and ODS equipment.

Though this award mainly covers European, Caucasus and Central Asian region, an exception was made this year due to the remarkable seizures affected by DRI.

DRI is one of the five organisations or individuals recognised and awarded the ‘3rd edition’ of the award this year, the officials said.

A representative of the DRI has been invited to attend the award ceremony in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in May.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...
Post a Comment
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
2 comments
Click Here To Read more »