S.A Shofiee, Sylhet :
Chemically treated fruits, both local and imported, continue to flood the markets of the Sylhet city and rest of the district, in absence of strong anti-adulteration drives of the government.
The chemically ripened fruits are openly sold both at the permanent shops in different markets and by the mobile vendors on the roads in the city, all over the district and even outside.
Sources said Many fruit wholesalers in the city confessed to putting formalin on the fruits that had been ripened with calcium carbide. Local and imported fruits, which are found in the summer, have arrived earlier than expected on the market due to premature ripening with toxic chemicals by some unscrupulous traders, posing a serious threat to public health, experts say.
They also pointed out that summer fruits like mango, litchi, pineapple, black berry, wax apple, which have flooded in the capital’s market, lack their original taste, as they are mostly treated with chemicals for quick ripening.
Such chemically treated fruits look attractive but contain traces of chemicals, which poses serious health hazard and people who eat such chemically-treated fruits are consuming poison slowly in the name of taking fresh fruits.
Public health experts and renowned nutritionists told daily sun that people usually take fruits to meet the demand of vitamins and minerals for human body. But people are now consuming poison slowly in terms of taking fresh fruits and this might lead to kidney failure and also affect brain.
Among the Fajli variety of mangoes is the most chemically treated fruit while apples, banana, oranges, grapes and dates undergo the process more than other imported varieties.
Despite the media and public outcry ripening of fruits particularly mangoes and bananas with calcium carbide, a highly hazardous chemical substance, goes on under the nose of the law enforcers. They named some other chemicals, marketed as crop-field pesticides by their manufacturers, which were used by the profiteers as ripening agents.
A 10-minute soak of green fruits like mango, banana and papaya in 10 liters of water mixed with 10 milliliters of any of these pesticides is enough to make them ripe in a very short period, several fruit traders in the city said. Different textile dyes are also used to ripen fruits, they said. They do it to prevent the fruits from getting rotted, they said.
Such fruits although look fresh taste sour. Local fruit traders, however, claimed that they had to use formalin because the fruits that were sent from the northern districts and other parts of the country were already ripened with chemicals, which made them prone to rot earlier than expected.
Local watchdogs blamed the government authorities for not giving sufficient efforts for preventing such acts while the latter claimed they did their best.
Md. Faizur Rahaman, president of SBNF said they had tried to continued motivational activities among the fruit growers and food manufacturers and traders against adulteration. ‘But as a watch body we don’t have the necessary equipment for detecting adulteration of foods that are going on,’ he admitted.
