Slow poisoning continues unabated

FAO-sponsored test conduc-ted on fruits, vegetables, milk and milk-products in a government laboratory revealed that all of them contain banned pesticides that pose serious health hazards. The presence of toxic substances in these samples was about more to 20 times more than set by the European Union. The report further said that 40% of the 82 samples contained pesticides that had been banned more than one and half decades ago. Most shockingly, there is an underground market inducing farmers to use these hazardous pesticides to save their crop from pest attack and increase the yield.
Dangers lurk in every item of food in the country. As long as consumers consider food adulteration a minor problem and government plays down its impact on the health system, there is no escaping the grave health hazard. Sensible citizens shudder to think about the enormous price the nation may have to pay in the long run.
Packaged and bottled drinks and fruit juices manufactured with harmful chemicals and ingredients are being sold openly. Many items like cakes, biscuits, sweetmeats, etc. are made unhygienic places. Rotten flour and eggs, adulterated oil, dirty water, date-expired imported powder milk, harmful colours, chemicals and essence are the ingredients.
The nature of adulteration varies from item to item. Textile dyes which are highly injurious to health are being randomly used to colour many types of food. Urea fertilizer is being used for whitening puffed rice.  Cyanide is used to give mustard oil an extra bite. Papayas and bananas are artificially ripened by a carcinogenic chemical called ethylene oxide.
Fish is a source of protein, which is essential for people of all ages. Many fish sellers spray formalin, a highly toxic substance causing kidney failure and devastating effects on central nervous system. Apart from dirty water that is mixed in rural areas, there is a new milk adulteration technique that uses a thickening agent, sorbitol, and detergent.
One way to avoid tainted fruits is by not eating those that are out of season. Vegetables and fruit samples collected from around Savar, Dhamrai and Kaliakoir near Dhaka reveal the presence of textile dyes, which in the short term will cause diarrhea, and gastro intestinal problems, but in the long term, toxic materials will accumulate in the body with serious health implications. In absence of effluent treatment plant (ETP), factory wastes are drained out into the farmlands, and ultimately contaminate the produce.
The approaching month of Ramadan will bring woes to the fasting people because of the unscrupulous restaurant owners and vendors who sell fried items. Cooking oil that is used to deep fry iftar items like peaju, alur chop, and kabab, should not be used for the second time, but many restaurants recycle the burnt oil, which severely affects the digestive system.
The National Research Council (NRC) has launched a study to evaluate whether kids face greater risk than adults of cancer, neurological damage and other ills from pesticides. Children may be more vulnerable for two reasons. The first is what they eat. “Pound for pound, a child consumes more food than adults do,” says Jack Moore of the Environmental Protection Agency. Kids also eat comparatively more than adults do of particular foods such as apples and juices. Either way, children ingest proportionately more pesticides. Secondly, children's physiology is ill-equipped to handle a pesticide-laced diet.
Children may also be at heightened risk because their neurological, digestive and other systems are still forming. In very young children, the liver is less able to metabolise and break down the toxins, and their immune systems are not well developed, says Dr. Philip Landrigan, Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at New York Mount Sinai Children Environmental health centre.
Scientists say that the amount of pesticide residue allowed to remain on food should be lowered. Because, if growers applied every pesticide permitted on every crop and if the maximum allowed residue remained on every crop, the cancer risk from food may be substantial. But the risk can be minimised in case of some vegetables by following some simple procedures, researchers say.
In case of tomatoes, most residues are lost if peeled; peeling removes some, but not all residue from potatoes; peeling removes most residue on oranges; outer leaves of lettuce should be discarded and inner ones washed; washing and peeling peaches will remove the residue; beans have to be blanched; washing, peeling and then cooking carrots will remove residues.
The reason why there is little action is that the responsibility of checking adulteration falls on many ministries and ends up being no one's baby. The ministries of agriculture and health should propound judicious use of pesticides to protect the health of citizens and to ensure that agricultural exports are not rejected.
Reports say that formalin detection kits installed by the government in some bazaars were taken away by the traders in Karwan bazaar, suggesting that the vegetables, fruits and fish they are selling are tainted and that they won't allow their merchandise to be tested before sale.
Because of large-scale smuggling of pesticides, both the yearly consumption and the list of permitted pesticides actually understate the amount being consumed as well as the varieties of pesticides available in the market. For example DDT, banned about two decades ago, is still available. It must be found out how markets are flooded with banned pesticides even when the chairman of Bangladesh Crop Protection Association claims that none of their members deals in banned pesticides. These chemicals must have been smuggled into the country by unscrupulous traders from neighbouring countries.
The efforts of the plant protection wing of the agricultural ministry to promote  integrated pest management (IPM) techniques, which advocate a mixture of traditional practices and limited use of pesticides,  have been too little and lackadaisical to have any major impact. The tolerance level has so far not been fixed for many pesticides. Worse, labels don't carry details such as waiting period between spraying and harvesting.
In this peak mango season, mango farm owners in North Bengal must have proper training in regard to time interval that must be maintained between spraying of pesticide and harvesting of the crop. Only now farmers in some areas of Bangladesh are listening to agriculture extension workers, who have been advising them to intercrop one type with another, a measure that prevents pest attack. Much of the country's cultivable land has already been rendered toxic and it will take years for the pesticides to degrade into harmless substances. The safe food act passed in November last year is yet to be implemented. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment must wake up to the reality and seriousness of the problem before it is too late.

The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.  
E-mail: aukhandk@gmail.com