MAGIC RIVER...
The Ganges is 2,525 kilometers long, along its course 27 major towns dump 902 million liters of sewage into it each day. Added to this are the human bodies consigned to this holy river, called the Ganga by the Indians. Despite this heavy burden of pollutants, the Ganges for millennia has been regarded as incorruptible.
Ganges water does not putrefy, even after long periods of storage. River water putrefies when lack of oxygen promotes the growth of anaerobic bacteria, which produces the telltale smell of stale water.
In 1896, the British physician E. Hanbury Hankin reported in the French journal Annales de l'Institut Pasteur that cholera microbes died within three hours in Ganga water but continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. A French scientist, Monsieur Herelle, was amazed to find "that only a few feet below the bodies of persons floating in the Ganga who had died of dysentery and cholera, where one would expect millions of germs, there were no germs at all." More recently, D.S. Bhargava, an Indian environmental engineer measured the Ganges' remarkable self-cleansing properties:
Bhargava's calculations, taken from an exhaustive three-year study of the Ganga, show that it is able to reduce BOD [biochemical oxygen demand] levels much faster that in other rivers.
Quantitatively, the Ganges seems to clean up suspended wastes fifteen to twenty times faster than other rivers.
Ganges water does not putrefy, even after long periods of storage. River water putrefies when lack of oxygen promotes the growth of anaerobic bacteria, which produces the telltale smell of stale water.
In 1896, the British physician E. Hanbury Hankin reported in the French journal Annales de l'Institut Pasteur that cholera microbes died within three hours in Ganga water but continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. A French scientist, Monsieur Herelle, was amazed to find "that only a few feet below the bodies of persons floating in the Ganga who had died of dysentery and cholera, where one would expect millions of germs, there were no germs at all." More recently, D.S. Bhargava, an Indian environmental engineer measured the Ganges' remarkable self-cleansing properties:
Bhargava's calculations, taken from an exhaustive three-year study of the Ganga, show that it is able to reduce BOD [biochemical oxygen demand] levels much faster that in other rivers.
Quantitatively, the Ganges seems to clean up suspended wastes fifteen to twenty times faster than other rivers.
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