Daily dose of poisons in food

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EVEN a short list would make any health conscious person shudder at the thought of what the consumers in Bangladesh have been consuming. Thus, fish and milk with formalin in them are used to keep human copses fresh but which, on entering human bodies, can produce cancer and liver diseases. Burnt mobil is mixed in edible oil. Toxic pesticides are sprayed liberally on fruits and vegetables. Colouring agents in foods are dyes that are used in textile industries and can severely undermine human health. Urea is used in muri (puffed rice) for frying to make the same crispier. Chillie and turmeric powders are adulterated with brick and saw dusts. Rotten eggs and meat are catered to in restaurants. Fish bred in sewer lagoons are marketed with the prospects of such fish that acquire different lethal bacteria from human excrement getting passed on to new human victims. Calcium carbide is used for artificial fruit ripening when eaten such fruits can produce a host of diseases.
The list can be made far longer. But that is not possible within the limitations of this letter. However, it should be enough to give one an idea of what sort of poisons millions of unsuspecting people are consuming in abundance with their daily foods and paying an awful price in the form of various sicknesses as a result.
Medicines are meant to save the most precious of possessions to humans, their lives. But media reports as well as the actions of law enforcement agencies from time to time show the unabated activities of producers of spurious medicines and contaminated food products.
It has reached a state from such very unconscionable activities on the part of utterly dishonest profit-mongers at the cost of human lives that no government worth the name can or should hold back from cracking down immediately and very hard on the doers of such crimes.
The government cannot also say that they are not appropriately empowered to go after the offenders because the existing laws in this regard already provide for capital punishment or long-term rigorous imprisonment for such crimes. The same, if enforced, can have deterrent effect on the offenders.
Rosina Akhter
Institute of Nutrition & Health Science
Dhaka