The report has, however, made distinctive recommendations. One of them is that the State Government should allot more powers to the PCMC for initiating strict action against industries and other units responsible for causing pollution.

The report, for the first time in the last three years, has been made by its own medical and health department, and has been presented to Municipal Commissioner B I Nagrale. It will be examined by the PCMC's environment committee. Additional Municipal Commissioner R B Konde is its secretary-member. The recommendations and the findings of the report are likely to come up for discussion at the civic general body meeting this month.

Senior medical officer K Nagkumar, who prepared the report, said that the report has recommended that the PCMC should have a full-fledged laboratory to continuously monitor the levels of pollutions through the year.

The noise levels in the ``silence zones'' or residential areas have been very high than the maximum levels. Ideally the levels during the day and nights should be below 50 db and 40 db respectively, but the level has been more than 70 db. One of the reasons for the high levels in air and noise pollution has been the high rise in number of vehicles. The number of vehicles have almost doubled in the last three years.

The number of two-wheelers alone is over 1.42 lakh, while the number of four-wheelers is 16,156, according to last year's figures. The number of trucks and heavy load carriers increased from 5337 (in 1997) to 8429 (in 1998). More than 71,500 vehicles pass daily through the twin township.

The report has recommended that buses of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Transport should have compressed natural gas engines to reduce air pollution. More than 150 PCMT buses in the fleet of 228 buses are more than eight years old.

There should be compulsory pollution under control (PUC) checks, three times during a year. The report has recommended that there should be far more number of PUC centres, both in industrial and residential zones. In other measures to control air and noise pollution, the report has said that fire-crackers should be burst at a single common place during the festival. The report has stressed that there should be more number of electric crematoriums to stop the use of wood. The people should be made more aware about the harmful effects of air pollution.

Regarding the pollution of Pavana river, the report has classified it as A IV, which means that the water is not fit for human consumption as the oxygen level is less than 5 mg per liter. The main cause of the river pollution have been the 11 nallahs which carry domestic and industrial effluents and release it in the river. The report said that more effluent treatment plants should be constructed with use of modern technology on small portions of land.

The nallah parks have been a huge success for reducing pollution of the river, it said. It recommended that there should be a common effluent treatment plant for industries, and the environment audit for industries should be made more strict.

The report has expressed concern about the harmful effects of ground water pollution about which there has been little study or findings.

836 deaths due to heart ailments
The number of deaths caused by heart, cancer, and tuberculosis diseases have registered an increase in the last two years, the PCMC environment status report has said.

In 1997 there were 515 deaths due to heart ailments while in 1998 the deaths were 836. The deaths due to cancer in 1997 and 1998 were 23 and 60 respectively, while due to tuberculosis were 51 and 210 respectively. Deaths due to accidents had increased from 157 (in 1997) to 286 (in 1998).

Male literacy was reported to be 86.28 per cent while female literacy is 70.5 per cent. The male female ratio was 1000:859.