KARACHI: An environmental agency in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Tuesday said the recent deaths of more than a dozen people in the port city of Karachi could not be linked to toxic gases, which health authorities suspect as the cause of the fatalities.
At least 15 people were reported dead between Jan 10 and Jan 26 in the city’s Ali Muhammad Goth neighborhood in district Keamari, according to an investigation report by the Sindh health department that was released last week. At least 34 others fell ill in the area and one of them, a three-year-old boy, died on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to 16.
Authorities sealed three factories in the Keamari neighborhood on Friday after health teams observed a “very foul smell” in the affected area. All infected cases and deaths were reported among residents who were living an estimated 10-20 feet away from factories that produce rubber, plastic, stone, and oil.
But the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) said in its report that the Sindh health department should look into the possibility of any infectious diseases as the agency could not link the deaths to air pollution or the presence of toxic gasses in the vicinity.
“Results obtained from laboratory does not indicate excess of any parameter in air quality which could lead to casualties from inhaling of any toxic gas,” the report read.
“The recent incident held at Ali Muhammad village is never be linked with air pollution or presence of toxic gasses in surrounding vicinity.”
Mehar Khurshid, a Sindh health department spokesperson, questioned SEPA’s findings and said the environmental causes of the deaths could not be ruled out.
“The environmental samples were taken after the factories were sealed. Aside from this, when the Sindh Health Department team arrived on the site, the doctors of the team were overcome by pollution and foul smell and many vomited,” Khurshid told Arab News.
“So environmental causes cannot be ruled out as the Sindh health department mentioned earlier that neither the lack of vaccination nor the environmental pollution can be ruled out.”
As of yet, Khurshid said, the health department was still awaiting reports of the blood samples of the deceased from the National Institute of Health (NIH), a Pakistani medical research facility in Islamabad.
Police this week filed a case against the three factory owners for manslaughter and negligence, and arrested one of them on a complaint by an area resident that poisonous gas leak from their factories had caused the deaths.
The health department earlier said both measles and gas emissions could be the reasons for the deaths, adding in its investigation report 40 out of 49 total victims were younger than 11 years of age and not vaccinated against measles.
Dr. Seemin Jamali, a health expert and former executive director of the government-run Jinnah hospital in Karachi, said the SEPA findings could be “correct” and health authorities should look for other causes as well.
“Environmental pollution affects the whole locality not a specific area,” she told Arab News.
