The Statutory Definitions: Environment, Pollutant, Pollution

Three, it includes property. This surprises students, and it should be remembered, because it means damage to buildings, monuments and crops is environmental damage under this Act and not merely private loss. The acid deposition litigation over the Taj Mahal turns on exactly this.

Clause (b): the two halves of "environmental pollutant"

First half, the substance. "any solid, liquid or gaseous substance". That is every substance in every state of matter, and it excludes nothing. Notice that noise is not here. Noise is not a substance, and it is not an environmental pollutant under this Act. It becomes a pollutant through the Air Act's separate definition, which is why Module II is anchored there and not here.

Second half, the threshold. "present in such concentration as may be, or tend to be, injurious to environment". Four points hang on these words.

1. Concentration, not presence. A substance is a pollutant at a concentration and not at another. This is the threshold from the previous chapter, in statutory form.
2. "may be, or tend to be". Neither phrase requires that harm has occurred. "May be" is possibility, "tend to be" is disposition. The law is aimed at a risk.
3. "injurious to environment", not to a person. Injury to the environment as defined in clause (a) is enough. No victim need be identified.
4. No numerical figure appears. The concentration is left to be fixed elsewhere, under section 6 and the rules made under it. The definition is the frame; the standards are the picture.

Clause (c): why it looks empty and is not

"environmental pollution" means the presence in the environment of any environmental pollutant. Read alone that is circular. Read with clause (b) it is not, because clause (b) has already built the threshold into the word "pollutant".

Unpack it and you get: pollution is the presence, in water, air or land or in their relationships, of a solid, liquid or gaseous substance at a concentration which may be or tends to be injurious. The three clauses are one definition written in three pieces, and they should be learnt as one.

A worked example

Farida owns a plot next to a chemical works at Ambernath. The works stores spent solvent in unlined pits. Nothing is discharged into any stream and nothing is emitted from any chimney above the standard. Over four years the solvent seeps down and reaches the aquifer that feeds Farida's borewell, and her mango trees begin to die.

Under the Water Act alone there is a problem. Sub-terranean water is within the definition of "stream", so the Act can reach it, but the Act's prohibition in section 24 is aimed at causing or permitting poisonous matter to enter a stream, and the works will argue that it put the solvent into its own pits on its own land and did not discharge into anything.

Under section 2 of the Act of 1986 the analysis is short.

• Is there an environmental pollutant? The solvent is a liquid substance, and at the concentration reaching the aquifer it is injurious. Clause (b) is satisfied.
• Is it present in the environment? Land is environment, and so is water, and so is the inter-relationship between land, water and plants. Clause (a) is satisfied twice over.
• Is there environmental pollution? Clause (c) is then automatic.

And because the trees are Farida's property, and property is inside clause (a), the harm to them is itself environmental harm and not merely her private loss. The Central Government's powers under sections 3 and 5, and the penalty machinery in sections 14A to 15F, are all available on that finding.

Distinctions

What it does NOT mean

It does not mean the 1986 definitions override the older Acts. Section 2 opens with "In this Act". A prosecution under section 24 of the Water Act is decided on the Water Act's definition of pollution, not on this one. The 1986 definitions matter because the 1986 Act is where the rules and the general powers live, not because they amend anything.

It does not mean environmental pollution requires proof of injury. It requires a concentration which may be, or tends to be, injurious. A reader who carries "damage" into the definition will misstate the burden in every problem question on this module.

It does not mean noise is an environmental pollutant. It is not, under this Act. Say so precisely: noise is an air pollutant under section 2(a) of the Air Act. Getting this backwards is the commonest single error on Module II.

Limits and criticism

Two are worth carrying.

The definitions delegate the hard part. Everything turns on the concentration at which a substance becomes injurious, and section 2 fixes no figure. The figures are notified by the executive under section 6, and can be changed by the executive without Parliament. That is efficient and it is also the standing criticism of the Act: the boundary of criminal and now penal liability moves by notification.

Clause (ca) shows the Act's centre of gravity has shifted. The only addition to section 2 in nearly forty years is the definition of "Fund", inserted in 2023 to support the Environmental Protection Fund in section 16. An Act that once defined only what pollution is now also defines where the penalty money goes. Module IV takes that up.

Quick revision

• Section 2(a) environment: includes, so it is open. Water, air, land, their inter-relationships, and human beings, other living creatures, plants, micro-organism and property.
• Section 2(b) environmental pollutant: means, so it is closed. Any solid, liquid or gaseous substance at a concentration which may be, or tend to be, injurious.
• Section 2(c) environmental pollution: the presence in the environment of any environmental pollutant. Circular alone, complete when read with (b).
• No numerical threshold in the section; the figures come from section 6 and the rules.
• Noise is not here. It is an air pollutant under the Air Act.
• Clause (ca), "Fund", was added in 2023 and is the only addition to the section.

Test yourself

1. What turns on the fact that clause (a) says "includes" while clauses (b) and (c) say "means"? An inclusive definition is open, so a court may treat something not listed as part of the environment if it naturally is. A "means" definition is exhaustive, so nothing outside its words is an environmental pollutant or environmental pollution. The result is a wide notion of environment and a tightly controlled notion of what pollutes it.

2. A company's emissions damage the stone of a heritage building but injure no person. Is that environmental pollution under the Act of 1986? Yes. Property is expressly inside the definition of environment in clause (a), and the definition also covers the inter-relationship between air and property. Provided the substance is present at a concentration which may be or tends to be injurious, clauses (b) and (c) are satisfied and no human injury need be shown.

3. Why is clause (c) not merely circular? Because the threshold has already been done in clause (b). A substance is only an "environmental pollutant" once it is present at an injurious concentration, so saying that pollution is the presence of a pollutant is saying that pollution is the presence of a substance at that concentration. The three clauses are one definition split into three.

4. Is noise an environmental pollutant under section 2(b)? No. Noise is not a solid, liquid or gaseous substance and so falls outside clause (b) altogether. It is brought into the statute book by the Air Act, whose definition of an air pollutant expressly includes noise, and that is the provision the Noise Rules of 2000 ultimately rest on.

5. Where does the Act fix the concentration at which a substance becomes a pollutant? Nowhere in section 2. The standards are notified by the Central Government under section 6 read with the Environment (Protection) Rules 1986, which is both what makes the Act workable across every industry and the reason it is criticised for letting the executive move the boundary of liability by notification.