High Lead content in Paints available in india

A recent study by Toxics Link claims that the lead content of paints available in India is dangerously high. Here is the article which came up in The Hindu.

To quote:-

“The tests show alarming levels of lead in enamel paints (with a gloss finish) and this holds true for most of the paints available in the market. Of the 31 enamel paint sample analysed for lead concentration, 83.87 per cent had more than 600 parts per million (PPM) of lead and only 19.1 per cent had less than 600 PPM presence of the heavy metal.”

However it is not a surprising factor in the sense that there is no regulatory framework to ensure that the lead content doesn’t beyond a prescribed limit. The only factor is that Paint Manufacturers are encouraged to conform to the 1000 PPM(Parts Per Million) limit as suggested by BIS(Bureau Of Indian Standards). It is high time that this is converted to a mandatory, rather than a voluntary regulation.

National Do Not Call Registry

Finally some relief for the Indian telephone subscribers as the DNC(Do-Not-Call) Registry takes off. According to the communication issued by TRAI, the whole framework will be actionized in three phases. In phase 1 the telemarketer will have to register with the system, wherein they will have to fill up an application form TM-I and submit it electronically. Subsequently, they will have to submit the same application form to the service providers. More details can be got here

In the second phase, any subscriber(mobile/Landline) can add their names to the registry through their service provider and this will take a maximum of 45 days to get activated.

In the third and final phase, the telemarketers will have to get their calling list scrubbed by the NDC registry( maintained by National Informatics Centre) and calls will be allowed to those numbers which will be cleared by the registry.

According to the news on Hindu

“As on September 7, about 14,750 telemarketers having around 4.5-lakh telephone lines have already applied with various telecom service providers for getting themselves registered with the DoT.”

The Registry can be accessed here

This initiative is a welcome step in providing a dedicated and centralized repository for all those who do not want to get unsolicited marketing calls. Earlier the NDC used to be maintained by the individual telemarketer. For eg:, ICICI Bank had its own database of people who do not want to get promotional calls. But there was the pain of going to each and every such orgn and registering at their website and to add to it, you would still get calls, flauting the rules set up by RBI on this.

Lets now hope for the best and pray that this initiative will really serve its purpose.

That Annoying Prompt in Windows..

It used to be quite irritating when you see the prompt “Updating your computer is almost complete. you must restart your computer for the updates to take effect” after installing the windows patches. I stumbled upon an article which tells how to disable this prompt from coming up. Not a great discovery, but quite useful.