A company called Ponds moved its thermometer factory from the US to Kodaikanal in 1982.
HLL took over Ponds, ran operations till 2001.
A shitton of Mercury was found onsite and Greenpeace and other NGO's have been on the case.
What has been ignored because of lack of visibility is the plight of my village (which I will not name). My village sits right on the Kodai foothills and till the year 2000, our only source of water was a river that ran through the village. The river ran very close to the Ponds factory.
I have since 2001 been seeing an exponential death rate due to cancer. I myself lost my Grandmom to cancer in 2004, my tiny village of around 5,000 people has seen about 250 cancer deaths in just the past 5 years. That is a 5% mortality rate just from cancer. India has by comparision a 0.05% mortality rate. In other words my village has a 8500% greater mortality rate from cancer as compared the nation at large.
