The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest. University of Calcutta [28], [31] and [45]. Syed Benazir Firdaus gratefully acknowledges the receipt of University Research Fellowship from the Universty of Calcutta. DG is a DST INSPIRE SRF. AC is supported from her grants from UGC, Govt. of India. MD is a Woman Scientist under Women Scientists

Scheme-A (WOS-A), Department of Science NVP-BGJ398 molecular weight and Technology, Govt. of India. JJ is a CSIR SRF. Dr. SKP is supported from the funds available to him from RNTIICS, Kolkata. Dr. SC is supported by the fund of his institute. Dr. KJ is supported by the fund of his institute. SBF is thankful to Subir Chakraborty of RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences and Barindra Nath Mandal (Technical Officer B, Div of Mol Med, Bose Institute) and Swaroop Biswas (Junior Lab assistant, CIF, Bose institute) for their technical assistance. “
“Industrial wastes and effluents containing heavy metals are undesirable by products of economic development and technological advancement. Among the inorganic pollutants, heavy metals are of primary concern because of their ubiquitous presence in the global environment

[1]. Marine JAK cancer contamination by heavy metals in the gulf of Oman primarily containing arsenic, cobalt and nickel as a result of atmospheric inputs has been found [2].) A high concentration of heavy metals in the sediments collected from the gulf of Gemlik (Turkey) has been reported, which is primarily due to increasing levels of pollution as a result of industrialization [3]. Moreover, sea water and sediment samples from East London and Port Elizabeth harbours were found to contain high concentrations of Cu, Mn, Zn and Fe [4]. It was also demonstrated that the stream water and the sediment in the ToLich and KimNgu rivers were heavily polluted with heavy metals exceeding the Vietnamese surface water standards [5]. Aligarh waste water has been reported to

contain various heavy metals in our previous investigations [6] and [7]. Among them Pb and Cd were of special mention due to their relatively higher concentrations in the waste water samples. Tannery waste water was reported to cause triclocarban induction of gene conversion and point mutation in Yeast D7 strain [8]. The genotoxic effect of waste waters coming from pharmaceutical production processes of cotrimoxazole B and piriton was also reported [9]. These effluents caused various types of chromosomal aberrations including disturbed spindle, vagrant and chromosome bridges and also showed dose dependent reduction in the number of dividing cells. The genotoxic effect of waste water sludges from Danish municipal waste water using Allium cepa genotoxicity test was studied by Rank and Nielson [10], and it was found to induce significant chromosomal aberrations at anaphase-telophase stage in Allium cepa cells.