Breathless & Shunned: Life at Delhi’s Ghazipur Landfill Site
The QuintIt’s not just the sight or the smell of a towering mountain of waste that bothers the residents of Ghazipur’s Mullah colony. Growing each day – probably even faster than the landfill site itself – are the health problems of the battered colony. Accumulating waste at the landfill site produces toxic gases like methane, which often sets the site on fire. It took the fire department three days to douse the fire,” says local resident Bilal Ansari. Parvez, who owns a tent shop, says that frequent fires have caused his wife to develop a respiratory distress so serious that she “has started throwing up blood with cough.” While smoke from the landfill site pollutes the air, leachate – the liquid that passes through the landfill site – eventually reaches the underground water, rendering it unsuitable for drinking.