People in Bangladesh are growingly infected with fatal diseases like cancer as food adulteration and environment pollution go uncontrolled and create a situation of living steeped in cancer-causing elements, experts say.
They find a toxic chain developed from agriculture to the environment to the human dinner table that is engulfing healthy survival.
Farmers are seen using pesticides in crops in an uncontrolled manner, using hormones in vegetable, fruit and other agricultural products, and in fish, poultry and cattle for fast growth. These chemicals are extremely toxic and increase the cancer risk in human body.
Furthermore, urban food habits, use of excessive vegetable oil, grilled food, smokey food, fried food, taking food from the footpath and hotels where unhealthy use of oils takes place may cause cancer and other health issues, according to the health experts and environmentalists.
There are 114 people suffering from cancer per 100,000 in the country, according to the first population-based cancer registry conducted by the Department of Public Health and Informatics at Bangladesh Medical University (BMU)
And the cancer-research journal Lancet Oncology corroborates such findings on perilous fallouts from wonton pollution and adulteration in the food chain.
According to data published in the journal, Lancet Oncology, the number of cancer patients in the country is 1.5 million. So far, the number of deaths from this disease is more or less close to one million.
The number of cancer patients here is increasing the fastest compared to other countries. The death rate in this deadly disease in Bangladesh is 70 per cent.
Talking to the FE, Dr. Md. Mamunur Rashid, Associate Professor, Dept of Oncology at BMU, said that food adulteration and unhealthy food habits remained major risk factor of cancer and concern especially for urban life.
"We people live in an environment. If it becomes toxic and unhealthy, then it will affect our health. Environment pollution, food adulteration, soil erosion, repeated cultivation in the same land with excessive use of chemicals are examples of how we are polluting our environment and then getting affected," he explains.
There is a general conception that tobacco is the main cause of cancer but it is a small portion of a "vast ocean of cancer-causing elements we are living in," he adds.
Furthermore, formalin is considered another agent that could have a cariogenic effect, but formalin can be eliminated using water.
"However, we need fresh water whereas we see the water sources, including groundwater, increasingly becoming polluted. Heavy metals like arsenic, pollutant agents like coliform have been found in drinking water, which is alarming and can cause cancer," he says, to underscore the urgency of awareness and government action to save life.
People living in the city of Dhaka are not largely healthy and there is no in-depth research to learn more on it, certainly if there is toxic material in food items in what scale or what scale can be permissible, says the oncologist.
He suggests proper monitoring and enforcement of law apart from awareness among the farmers and consumers.
Prof Shafi Mohammad Tareq, a teacher at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Jahangirnagar University, is involved in so many studies and researches where they found cariogenic risk factors in food items, including vegetable and poultry and others.
Prof Tareq, also fellow at the Higher Education Academy-UK, has said that "farmers often use insecticides and hormones and other agro-chemicals which carry the risk of cancer. Cancer doesn't develop in a day. "It is a slow process, and when it is identified, we don't even know how we got infected."
And, this trend is higher in the sub-urban areas.
Like, a farmer cannot use pesticides to agri-products 72 hours before being taken to market. Similarly, poultry chickens also cannot be fed hormones before 72 hours of sale.
"There are certain rules on the use of insecticides and chemicals but farmers often don't follow it, and for a lack of monitoring from the government side, people care less but the effect is immense, even deadly," he warns.
They also found heavy metals in samples of poultry and related feed they were provided, and in vegetables that were grown near landfills, including in Aminbazar of Dhaka, he mentions.
Low-income people are the worst victims of it. And farmers are growingly infected with cancer as they are directly involved in the process of using toxic chemicals and do not tend to use safety gears.
Moreover, one of the biggest reasons for the increase in cancer patients in Bangladesh is environmental pollution. Environment and air pollution is also involved. Besides, most people in Bangladesh suffer from lung diseases owing to air pollution. And, smoking is the main cause of lung cancer.
Air pollution damages the immunity against diseases and the body's protection capability.
A study has found fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) shortens average life expectancy by 6.8 years in Bangladesh. A World Bank research showed losses from air pollution in 2019 ranged from $11.5 billion to $13 billion, which was 3.9 per cent to 4.4 per cent of Bangladesh's GDP.
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