There is no move in sight for testing fruits ripened with harmful chemicals while summer fruits are already in the Dhaka city markets.
The both Dhaka city corporations and the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution, however, blamed scarcity of law enforcers due to the political unrest for their failure to launch drive against use of chemicals in fruit.
The mobile court, which is supposed to run regular drive to check food adulteration, could not keep up it previous routine for shortage of law enforcers, said top officials of two organisations.
‘Generally we run our mobile court on Saturday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But in the last few months the routine could not maintained,’ BSTI deputy director Mohammad Saiful Islam told New Age.
Chief health officer of Dhaka North City Corporation M Afzalur Rahman said, ‘Although the summer fruits are already in city markets, we could not launch the drive for lack of police forces who are busy tackling political situation.’
The authorities said they even did not fix any date for launching the drive.
The BSTI and the DNCC would conduct drives against fruits adulteration if they would get the law enforcers, they said.
The city fruit markets are flooded with litchi, ripe mango, water melon, pineapple, custard apple and Bangi.
Fruits sprayed with various chemicals have been seriously threatening public health, even causing death, physicians have warned.
The sellers are using chemicals either to ripen the fruits or to make them look fresh, said BSTI officials.
They said formalin is generally used in grapes and dates and ethanol in apples to make them look fresh, while carbide is used to prematurely ripen mangoes, bananas and papayas.
Besides, pesticides are used in litchi even at the garden to protect them from pest infection.
Last year, 14 children died of pesticide infection from litchi in Dinajpur and Thakurgaon which have a huge number of litchi orchards.
SK Roy, former scientist of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, said chemically treated fruits affect kidney, lung and lever and increase the incidence of cancer.
High dose and concentrated use of pesticide in fruits may even cause death, he said.
Carbide causes high blood pressure, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Roy added.
Roy said long time effects of formalin, which means if one continuously consumes formalin in food would suffer from cerebral pressure and convulsions, said SK Roy, adding that it could cause kidney and liver failure.
-With New Age input
