Living in toxicity: slow violence in the surroundings of the Buriganga river of Bangladesh

This research explores, how people of Suvadda - a union of Keraniganj subdistrict under Dhaka district in Buriganga Riverside, experience living in toxicity due to water, air, and noise pollution. More specifically, how slow and fast temporalities of environmental harm impacted their life, and how they observe the temporality of environmental violence, and how they respond to it. The Buriganga River and its surroundings are ecologically degraded and neighborhoods of low-income communities. Untreated industrial effluent and urban sewage are discharged into the river as well as household waste and plastic are dumped into the river and canal. Adopting slow violence, necropolitics, and environmental classism as the theoretical framework and based on qualitative interviews, this research provides an analysis of how pollution is disproportionally distributed among poor communities, and how these communities experience and respond to toxicity created by water, air, and noise pollution. This research also tries to investigate why these people do not participate in resisting the environmental injustice that they face.