DHAKA: Peoples’ most favorite seasonal fruit mango turned to be poisonous itself following use of formalin and other chemicals, reveals a number of investigations carried out by banglanews teams.
The contamination causing serious health hazards starts in growing level of mango and continued until it reaches the retail markets, found the investigation.
Just take the smell factor as proof of the venomous procedures.
A banglanews team comprising Mahmud Menon and Mofizul Sadik reported on absence of mango-smell in mangoes at to Badamtalee wholesale market in the capital.
“Where will you get the smell! The smell is dead... Allah has taken away the smell,” said Jahangir, who has been working in the wholesale market for last 20 years.
He took a `himsagor’ to his nose and said: (I’m) getting smell of something else, not of mango.
Asked why a different smell, Jahangir elaborated that different types of chemicals are mixed with mangoes to keep the fruit fresh days after days.
“Chemicals are also used to bring color of mangoes,” he said.
Nowadays one will find different types of colors of same species of mango in the market. Just one ‘laxanvog’ has yellow, red, reddish-yellow, reddish-green and many other colors.
It is an open secret that ethophen is used to ripen the mango.
The traders, who have other tricks for business, however claim that they do not want that ethophen is used so that buyers are attracted to original smell of mangoes.
“There are some growers and suppliers who use chemicals to make the mangoes ripen early... That’s the reason that people do not get original smell and fresh taste,” said Al Amin, treasurer of Badamtalee Fruits Businessmen Association.
Sobhan, another businessman at Badamtalee, said everyone here knows that carbide, ethophen, formalin and other chemicals are used, but none wants to talk about it.
Both Sobhan and Al Amin however claimed that the traders at Badamtalee do not mix chemicals. “All these are done at the garden and supply stages,” said Sobhan.
Another team of banglanews comprising Ishtiaq Husain and Adnan Rahman in a night visit found a similar picture at Jatrabari and Syedabad wholesale markets as well as markets at Dholaipar and Waisghat.
“Mango without chemical! Go abroad, here you’ll not found any mango without chemicals,” said Jewel, a whole-seller at Jatrabari.
Ismail Hossain, another seller at Jatrabari, also admitted having chemical-free mango in Bangladesh is next to impossible.
Al Amin, a retail seller at Dholaipar, disclosed that not only local mangoes, chemicals are also mixed with fruits imported from abroad.
As a truck was being unloaded in front of a store of Mizan Master at Waisghat, one Saiful showed powder spread over packed mangoes and said: all these are chemicals we are getting with from the suppliers.
Also, banglanews teams comprising Rahman Masud and Abu Khalid at Karwan Bazar and Ismail Hossain and Syeed Shipon at Gazipur did not find any different picture.
BDST:1157 HRS, JUN 09, 2014
