On a winter morning in December, as Lahore’s fog hung low over clogged drains and stagnant pools of grey water, a young mother filled a plastic bottle from a hand pump on the edge of her neighbourhood. She paused, lifted it to her nose, and frowned at the faint, sulphuric smell. There was no alternative. Boiling the water might make it safer, she told herself, even as she knew it would not remove what could not be seen.

Scenes like this, repeated daily across South Asia, Africa and parts of Latin America, formed the unspoken backdrop to a stark and unsettling message delivered by Prof. Dr. Aurangzeb Hafi on December 19, 2025 — a day marking his 53rd birthday, but one he chose to dedicate not to mere celebrations, but to warning the world.

In a keynote message titled “The Unsafe Future of Safe Water & Air”, Prof. Hafi, Principal Investigator of the Asia & Oceania Post-Doctoral Academia (AOPDA), presented what he described as an evidence-based situation report on the “Sewage-Hydrotoxicity-Health Nexus”. The document traced a continuous, often ignored chain linking prevailing sewage-drainage systems to toxicated underground water reserves, toxic air emissions and, ultimately, the mounting toll on human health. Prof. Hafi, who was listed among the “Top of the Top-10” global achievers in the Bi-Decadal Merit Gazette by Impact Hallmarks in 2021, framed the issue as a global crisis of governance, equity and survival rather than a purely technical environmental concern.

According to United Nations statistics cited in the report, around 869,000 children under the age of five die every year due to toxically germ-infested water — equivalent to the loss of three to four young lives every minute. An additional 2.1 million children die annually from exposure to other environmental toxins and air-pollutants, while millions more endure chronic illnesses, impaired cognitive development and life-long disabilities. Prof. Hafi identifies the core driver behind this grim arithmetic as the “Lethal Tetragonal Pollution System”, with the prevailing sewage-drainage infrastructure acting as its central engine.

He explains that in much of the developing world, sewage systems are not ‘ecologically compatible’ and are structurally incapable of confining the pollutants they generate. Instead, they release a toxic mix of odorous and hazardous gases such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide; volatile organic compounds including sulfur-based compounds and phenolics; bioaerosols carrying bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites; and particulate matter (PM) that lingers in the air and settles into the environment in its totality. Over time, these emissions infiltrate underground water reserves, converting vital aquifers into long-term repositories of toxic contaminations.

The scale of this contamination is no longer theoretical. In Lahore, recent findings cited in the report reveal that due to sewage water intrusion, clear indications of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) have been detected in well over 97 per cent of groundwater samples drawn from depths of 100 to 120 feet. The presence of STEC — particularly the highly virulent O157:H7 strain — is especially alarming. This pathogen is known to cause severe gastrointestinal illness and can progress to Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), a life-threatening condition that leads to kidney failure, most often affecting young children and the elderly. For Prof. Hafi, these findings underscore how deeply sewage-derived pathogens have penetrated what were once considered protected underground water reserves.

UN-released figures for 2024-2025 indicate that approximately 2.1 billion people, nearly one in four globally, lack access to safe drinking water. At the same time, some 2.5 billion people do not have access to appropriate sanitation facilities. These deficits, Prof. Hafi argues, generate a feedback loop in which inadequate sanitation accelerates water contamination, which in turn amplifies disease transmission and environmental degradation.

The health consequences are particularly severe in the context of vector-borne diseases. More than 57 per cent of the world’s population is currently at high risk of such illnesses. WHO and UNICEF statistics cited in the report indicate that in roughly 72 to 83 per cent of adult cases, and 80 to 87 per cent of cases among children, unsafe drinking water constitutes a major attributable root source. In densely populated urban fringes and rural settlements alike, sewage outlets are tunnelled and pooled onto lands inhabited by poorer communities, imposing a disproportionate toxic burden. Overwhelmed soil-patches and subsoil water systems lose their natural capacity to shield against or neutralise pollutants, leaving drinking water sources increasingly compromised — a trend documented in research initiative, SAIRI’s decade-long report on water resources.

The report further notes that the crisis is geographically concentrated yet globally consequential. The UN children’s rights organisation, in collaboration with WHO, estimates that just ten countries account for nearly two-thirds of the global population without access to safe drinking water. These include China with 108 million people affected, India with 99 million, Nigeria with 63 million, Ethiopia with 43 million, Indonesia with 39 million, Congo with 37 million, Bangladesh with 26 million, Tanzania with 22 million, and both Kenya and Pakistan with 16 million each. Prof. Hafi warns that if current trends persist, the number of people deprived of safe drinking water could more than double in the coming decades.

Against this backdrop, the report highlights severe policy gaps and calls for an urgent shift away from fragmented, sector-by-sector approaches. Governments, Prof. Hafi argues, must recognise water and air safety as inseparable priorities and adopt integrated regulatory frameworks that reflect this reality. He urges continuous engagement with decision-makers, stakeholders and the public to illuminate the trade-offs and synergies inherent in sewage management, sanitation and eco-sustainability.

In one of its most forceful conclusions, the report issues an ‘inevitable call’ for what it terms a ‘Global Hydro-Detoxification Initiative’, warning that the remnants of inaction are already assuming ‘devastating proportions of epic scale’. The damage, Prof. Hafi stresses, is no longer confined to water or soil alone. Entire ecosystems are being toxicated, leaving future generations a planet far more hostile than the one inherited from centuries of human stewardship. As night falls over cities and villages where safe water remains a daily uncertainty, his warning resonates with uncomfortable clarity: the ‘unsafe future’ of ‘safe water and air’ is no longer a distant threat — it is already here.