Shah Mohammad Ullah ( bn, শাহ মোঃ উললাহ) is a Bangladeshi-Austrian
soil scientist and environmentalist, who primarily researches
arsenic contamination in the
air and
water.
The former chairman of the Department of Soil, Water and Environment at the
University of Dhaka, the oldest department in the country, he led projects in the field of
heavy metal contamination
A toxic heavy metal is any relatively dense metal or metalloid that is noted for its potential toxicity, especially in environmental contexts. The term has particular application to cadmium, mercury and lead, all of which appear in the World H ...
in
crops
A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydroponics ...
, in collaboration with the
Seibersdorf Research Center, Austria and the
Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of Bangladesh.
Background
A full Professor of
Dhaka University
The University of Dhaka (also known as Dhaka University, or DU) is a public research university located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is the oldest university in Bangladesh. The university opened its doors to students on July 1st 1921. Currently i ...
, Ullah completed his
BSc from the
Dhaka University
The University of Dhaka (also known as Dhaka University, or DU) is a public research university located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is the oldest university in Bangladesh. The university opened its doors to students on July 1st 1921. Currently i ...
, and then his MSc and
D.Agri from the
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He was made chairman before the 60th Anniversary of the Department, predating the country's age. At DU, he was both a colleague and successor of
Iajuddin Ahmed. Concerned with the
national water situation, Ullah presided over the 2011
World Water Day event in
Bangladesh hosting the Health Minister who sought to improve access to
safe drinking water.
He predicted that the entry of
metals into the
food chain through
plant uptake might cause health hazards and also environmental problems in 1999. In 2010,
Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh saw a large number of deaths among the trees growing in the city according to ''
The Daily Star''. Ullah said that the soil problems or air pollution might be responsible for the deaths of the trees, especially, if the level of metals such as copper, nickel, lead,
cadmium and
zinc goes up in the soil, he said. Besides, a rise in
sulphuric
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
,
nitric The chemical element nitrogen is one of the most abundant elements in the universe and can form many compounds. It can take several oxidation states; but the most oxidation states are -3 and +3. Nitrogen can form nitride and nitrate ions. It also fo ...
,
hydrochloric and other types of acid in the air could also cause the leaves of trees to decay, thereby killing them. He pointed out that trees grow under these constraint in industrial areas where air remains highly polluted. Furthermore, he added that the
soil used for filling up
lowlands for the
Bashundhara Housing Project should be analysed to find the reasons behind it.
He was also a freedom fighter in 1971's
Liberation War
Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) to establish separat ...
against Pakistan.
On 23 April 2019, a lawsuit was filed against Ullah under the Digital Security Act's section 25, 29 and 31, along with the Dhaka Cyber Tribunal. On 19 January 2022, the lawsuit was postponed.
Selected publications
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See also
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Biogeochemistry
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Environmental radioactivity
Environmental radioactivity is produced by radioactive materials in the human environment. While some radioisotopes, such as strontium-90 (90Sr) and technetium-99 (99Tc), are only found on Earth as a result of human activity, and some, like po ...
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Heavy Metal Accumulation in Soils
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Soil Acidity
Soil pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity (alkalinity) of a soil. Soil pH is a key characteristic that can be used to make informative analysis both qualitative and quantitatively regarding soil characteristics. pH is defined as the neg ...
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Organic Pollutant
References
External links
Shah Mohammad Ullah, Profileat
University of DhakaShah Mohammad Ullahat
ScientificCommons
ScientificCommons was a project of the University of St. Gallen ''Institute for Media and Communications Management''. The major aim of the project was to develop the world’s largest archive of scientific knowledge with fulltexts freely accessi ...
Shah Mohammad Ullahat
DOAJ
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ullah, S. M.
Living people
Scientists from Vienna
University of Dhaka alumni
Bengali scientists
Bangladeshi scientists
Year of birth missing (living people)