An interview with Deepak Bhati and Gauri Arora, Programme Officers in the Sustainable Food Systems team of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, simplifying the complicatedness of antimicrobial resistance for our young readers. ******************************************** Hi Deepak and Gauri! We’ve been hearing about this complex and scary thing, ‘Antimicrobial Resistance’ (AMR). Can you please unpack it for our kids?...

An Introduction to Bacteria, Antibiotics and ‘Anti-Microbial Resistance.’ Contest included!

Stealthy, silent, and deadly as an assassin. Striking at will across the world. Antimicrobial Resistance, or AMR, is stalking humanity, leaving millions dead and dying in its wake. A well-recognised global public health threat today, AMR happens because of misuse and overuse of life-saving antibiotics, which makes disease-causing microbes resistant to existing medicines. In such a scenario, prevention is the only way out.

What are Micro-Plastics? Micro-plastics have not been defined in particular. They are just tiny particles that result from the disintegration of bigger plastic materials. However, most researchers say that any plastic smaller than 5 millimetres in size is a micro-plastic. Hence, these are really, really teeny-tiny! Plastics are made up of polymers, which are derived from fossil fuels. A whole lot of chemicals are added to the polymers—close to 10,000—to ensure that a given plastic has the desired properties...