Lead pollution is one of India's most overlooked public health crises. According to a 2020 UNICEF and Pure Earth report, India is home to over 275 million children with elevated blood lead levels, nearly half the country's child population. 

A major source of this contamination is wastewater from battery recycling units, which often carries high concentrations of dissolved lead into rivers and soil.

Now, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have developed a biological process that could offer a cleaner way to deal with this problem.

Instead of relying on chemicals, the team has turned to naturally occurring bacteria to pull toxic lead out of acidic industrial wastewater.

The hidden problem in treating water

The research was carried out by Professor Pranab Kumar Ghosh of the Department of Civil Engineering and research scholar Sreekanth Yadav Golla, with findings published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering. 

Most treatment plants use chemicals to clean wastewater that contains lead. But this process takes time and creates a lot of lead-filled sludge, which then has to be disposed of safely.

This sludge can become another problem. If it ends up in........

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