Fruits sprayed with various chemicals have flooded the city’s markets, seriously threatening the health of the public who consume a good amount of fruits during Ramadan, warned officials and physicians.
The sellers are using chemicals either to ripen the fruits or to keep them looking fresh, said officials of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution.
Officials of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh said that formalin is generally used in grapes and dates, and ethanol in apples, to keep them looking fresh, while carbide is used to prematurely ripen mangoes, bananas and papayas.
The chemically treated fruits first affect the skin of the consumers and later the liver and kidney, and also increase the risk of contracting cancer, said Mohammad Shahidullah, pro-vice-chancellor of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, on Saturday.
Shahidullah, a paediatrician and medicine specialist, said that the incidence of cancer was increasing in the country, and blamed food adulteration and application of chemicals to various forms of foodstuff as the major cause.
Abul Kasem, a buyer at Karwan Bazaar, said that a few days back he had bought two kilograms of apples which looked fresh but were rotten inside, and tasted awful.
‘I am afraid that all the apples are chemically treated and so I have stopped buying them,’ Kasem added.
Recent newspaper reports of formalin administration to grapes and dates have really panicked me, said housewife Rita Begum of Purba Basabo, who demanded more drives by the BSTI.
Mohammad Al-Amin, executive magistrate of Dhaka district administration, told New Age that many fruits were examined during the drives but formalin was found only in grapes and dates.
On August 4 a mobile court of the BSTI seized 470 kilograms of dates and 23 kilograms of grapes from seven shops, and fined a shop in Mohammadpur Krishi Market Tk 25,000, for the presence of formalin in the fruits they were selling, said BSTI officials.
BSTI’s surveillance teams and mobile courts seized 50 kg of grapes from six shops in Mohakhali on 22 June, 8 kg of grapes from a shop at Uttara on June 20, and destroyed 50 kg of grapes seized in three shops at Hatir Pool on June 7 for formalin administration.
A mobile court of the BSTI fined a fruit trader Tk 10,000 and destroyed 50 kg of his mangoes in Mirpur-1 on June 6 for artificially ripening them by applying calcium carbide.
The CAB’s general secretary, Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan, said that chemically treated fruits have flooded the city’s markets.
He suggested that the sellers should be made aware of the risks of using chemicals and urged not to make profits by endangering the health of fellow human beings.
He demanded that the government provide the authorities concerned with an adequate number of instruments to detect the presence of all sorts of chemicals in fruits and food items to protect the people’s health.
-With New Age input
