The mobile courts in action have recently seized huge amounts of textile dye from food producing factories. One mobile court seized 11 different kinds of textile colours from a single confectionery.

The court also seized a huge amount of ammonia to be used to produce bread and biscuits from two factories in Old Dhaka on August 10.

The court first raided Titas Bread and Biscuit factory on Rajnarayan Road in Lalbagh and found a pile of ammonia, an ingredient of urea fertiliser. It also raided the factory of Master Food on the same road and found similar chemicals.

BSTI authorities permit using colouring agents only in jam, jelly, juice and sauce, but they do not know whether those food colours are available in the market or not. They also do not know what kind of colour food producers are using as manpower for scrutinising the situation is limited.

"We do not permit any colour for confectionery and sweetmeat items. But we have only 11 people to monitor these things in the whole country, which is simply an impossible situation," said a BSTI director asking not to be named.

Experts say consumption of such harmful chemicals could lead to a host of health problems, including skin reactions like dermatitis, allergies, asthma, breathing problems, stomach upsets, peptic ulcers, bone marrow depression leading to leukemia and cancer, and also kidney failure.

"The effects could be short-term and long-term. The short-term effects could be diarrhoea, abdominal pain, and vomiting. But the long-term effects are very serious -- they could be pancreas cancer, intestine cancer, and asthma," said Associate Professor Miah Mashud, head of the gastro-entrology department of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard, the BSTI approves three types of colours for use in food: Poncean 3R, Erythrosine and Poncean SX. But bakers and sweetmeat producers in the city are using textile colours like Metanil Yellow, Orange ll, Rhodamine B, Auramine, Blue and VRS.

"When the producers send us any sample of their products, they meet the standard. But then they change their position and start producing below standard food for undue profit," said the BSTI official.

"It is not possible for us to supervise all those things due to our limited manpower," he added.

Most yellow items are coloured with Metanil Yellow and red items with Rhodamine B, sources from the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (Cab) recently revealed.

The sources said food producers also use Black SM, Sun Yellow RCH, Orange SE, Scarlet 4BS, Sky Blue FB, Green PLS, Fast Brown BRLL etc. Yellow 3GX, Orange GR POP, Bordeaux BW, Fast Red 5B, Turqoise Blue GL, and Brown CN.

Producers may also be using harmful sweeteners, although detecting this chemical is difficult. "They may also use sodium cyclamate to sweeten their products, which is banned worldwide. But we do not know whether some of them are doing it or not as our laboratory testing systems are not so good," said Quazi Farooque, the secretary general of CAB.

Consumers, meanwhile, are being held hostage to the dishonest food adulterators.

"I can't imagine I and my children were having those items with textile dye and urea fertiliser. I don't even know how to prevent them as the situation has reached such a point," said one of the magistrates conducting the ongoing drives.