Daily Current Affairs : 13th August

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. PET bottles
2. Cancer
3. Safety measures for Children provided under Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019
4. Perseids Meteor Shower
5. Facts for Prelims : LoC & LAC, Krishna wildlife sanctuary

1 . PET Bottles

Context : PET bottles are safe, a comprehensive evaluation by the CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore has determined.

About the Issue

• For years there’s been a swirling debate internationally on whether PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) bottles, which are the mainstay of plastic bottles and disposable food containers, leach harmful chemicals when exposed to high temperatures.

About the Findings

• The CFRTI analysis, commissioned by an industry body, concluded that antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, mercury, selenium and zinc “were below” their detection limits (BDL) of 0.001 mg/kg.
• Bisphenol-A was below its detection limit of 0.02 mg/kg.
• The CFTRI scientists found that the presence of metals, BPA and pthalates were “below detection limit” meaning that they were below the minimum levels required by the instruments and methods employed by the researchers to detect these chemicals.
• They were also below the EU (European Union) regulation norms of the “specific migration limit”, which is the maximum amount of a substance that can migrate from a food packaging material or food container into food. In most cases the EU standards are similar to the ones specified by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, except for BPA for which FSSAI has not specified standards and zinc, where FSSAI permits 25mg/kg as opposed to the EU’s 5 mg/kg. The analysis found that no chemcials breached the EU-specified norms.
• The scientists also studied water stored in PET bottles and checked whether it affected the hormone levels of rats and mice. “The evaluation found that the experimental male and female rats exhibited comparable blood hormone levels in both cases. This conclusively proved that PET bottles did not cause any Endocrine Disruption activity if used to package water,” a study report concluded.

2 . Cancer

Context : If all goes as planned, cancer treatments will soon be covered under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana- Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which is the Central Government’s health insurance scheme that aims to give medical cover to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families of approximately 50 crore beneficiaries, providing coverage of up to ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.

About Cancer

• Cancer is the name given to a collection of related diseases. In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues.
• Cancer can start almost anywhere in the human body, which is made up of trillions of cells. Normally, human cells grow and divide to form new cells as the body needs them. When cells grow old or become damaged, they die, and new cells take their place.
• When cancer develops, however, this orderly process breaks down. As cells become more and more abnormal, old or damaged cells survive when they should die, and new cells form when they are not needed. These extra cells can divide without stopping and may form growths called tumors.
• Many cancers form solid tumors, which are masses of tissue. Cancers of the blood, such as leukemias, generally do not form solid tumors.

Malignant and benign Tumors

• Cancerous tumors are malignant, which means they can spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. In addition, as these tumors grow, some cancer cells can break off and travel to distant places in the body through the blood or the lymph system and form new tumors far from the original tumor.
• Unlike malignant tumors, benign tumors do not spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. Benign tumors can sometimes be quite large, however. When removed, they usually don’t grow back, whereas malignant tumors sometimes do. Unlike most benign tumors elsewhere in the body, benign brain tumors can be life threatening.
• As a cancerous tumor grows, the bloodstream or lymphatic system may carry cancer cells to other parts of the body. During this process, known as metastasis, the cancer cells grow and may develop into new tumors.

Cancer cases in India

• According to the World Health Organisation, the rate of mortality due to cancer in India is high, with cancer the second-most common disease in India, responsible for maximum mortality, with about 0.3 million deaths per year.
• Government figures note that the estimated number of people living with the disease stands at around 2.25 million, with over 11 lakh new cancer patients registered each year.
• “In India, the risk of developing cancer before the age of 75 years for males stands at 9.81% and females at 9.42%. Total deaths due to cancer in 2018 was 7,84,821 (Men: 4,13,519; Women: 3,71,302). The risk of dying from cancer before the age of 75 years stood at 7.34% in males and 6.28% in females.
• Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer in India, followed by breast cancer and oral cancers.

Need for inclusion in PMJAY

• In India, cancer treatment is very expensive and we would like to include treatment for all types of cancer in our health packages, which are cost-effective, proven and beneficial to patients.
• Patients often undergo multiple therapies for cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, which are very expensive.

3 . Safety measures for Children provided under Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019

About the amendment

• To make the protective headgear mandatory for children, Section 129 of the principal Act has been replaced in the Act as “Every person, above four years of age, driving or riding or being carried on a motorcycle of any class or description shall, while in public place wear protective headgear conforming to such standards as may be prescribed by the Central government”.
• Only Sikhs wearing turban have been exempted from the provision of Section 129 that makes helmets mandatory for all riders of motorcycles above four years of age.
• The Act says the Central government may by rules provide for measures for the safety of the children below four years of age riding or being carried on a motorcycle.
• With this amendment, children from the Kindergarten classes will have to wear the protective headgear if they have to travel on motorcycles.
• At present, only protective headgear for children riding cycles are available in the market across the country. The decision of the Union government will see the markets flooded with protective headgear for children. For the parents, carrying headgear of children is another issue.

Need

• “Pillion riders, including children, are more prone to the injuries than the rider of the motorcycle in case the vehicle collides. Helmets of prescribed standards fastened to the head by straps or other fastenings can avoid head injuries

4 . Perseids Meteor Shower

Context : Several meteor showers can be seen around the year. Among the brightest and best known of them is the Perseid Meteor Shower, which has been active from July 17 onward, and can be seen until August 26. The showers peaked on the night of Monday-Tuesday.

About Meteor Shower

• On its journey around the Sun, the Earth passes through large swathes of cosmic debris. The debris is essentially the remnants of comets — great frigid chunks of matter that leave behind dirty trails of rocks and ice that linger long after the comets themselves have passed.
• As the Earth wades through this cloud of comet waste, the bits of debris create what appears from the ground to be a fireworks display in the sky — known as a meteor shower.

About Perseids Meteor Shower

• The Perseids occur as the Earth runs into pieces of cosmic debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud of debris is about 27 km wide — and at the peak of the display, between 160 and 200 meteors streak through the Earth’s atmosphere every hour as the pieces of debris, travelling at some 2.14 lakh km per hour, burn up a little less than 100 km above the Earth’s surface.
• The Perseids currently visible in the night sky are not due to the debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle during its most recent pass, which happened in 1992. This particular comet goes around the Sun once in 133 years, and the meteors now visible were left behind by the pass before the last one — or perhaps even earlier.
• The showers peak when the Earth passes through the most dense part of the debris cloud. Peaks can last for a few hours or several nights.
• The showers should be seen with naked eyes; binoculars and telescopes narrow the field of vision.

5 . Facts for Prelims

Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary

• Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary is a wildlife sanctuary and estuary located in Andhra Pradesh, India.
• It is one of the rarest eco-regions of the world because it harbors vast tracts of pristine mangrove forests. It is believed by conservationists to be one of the last remaining tracts of thick primary mangrove forests of South India
• As many as 15 Fishing Cats were recorded in the pilot project conducted at the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh in 2014-16. In 2008, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) classified the rare Fishing Cat as endangered

Line of Control

• It defines the boundary separating parts of Kashmir controlled by India and Pakistan
• Originally known as the Cease-fire Line, it was redesignated as the “Line of Control” following the Simla Agreement, which was signed on 3 July 1972.
• The part of the former princely state that is under Indian control is known as the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• The Pakistani-controlled part is divided into Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan. The northernmost point of the Line of Control is known as NJ9842.
• The Line of Control divided Kashmir into two parts and closed the Jehlum valley route, the only entrance and exit of the Kashmir Valley at that time.

Line of Actual Control

• The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is a demarcation line that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory.
• Line of Actual Control is the effective military border which separates Indian controlled areas of Jammu and Kashmir from Aksai Chin. It is the effective border between People’s Republic of china and India.
• It touches Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himanchal and Sikkim of Indian states.
• This border is not a legally recognized international boundary, but rather it is the practical boundary.
• The term “LAC” gained legal recognition in Sino-Indian agreements signed in 1993 and 1996.
• The 1996 agreement states, “No activities of either side shall overstep the line of actual control.
• LAC forms the effective border between the two countries together with the (also disputed) McMahon Line in the east, and a small undisputed section in between.