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Much ado about nothing

Equipped with inadequate chemical testing kits, police embark on adulterated fruit drive

Star Report
Instead of taking any initiative at the orchards and wholesale markets outside Dhaka, the government has started a drive for checking formalin in fruits with a kit called Formaldehyde Metre Z-300 at the entry points of the capital.
Though the drive conducted by Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute (BSTI) officials created much hype, doubts also surfaced in the media whether it would yield any result.
The farmers and orchard owners use four to five types of toxic chemicals, including insecticides, ripening hormones and preservatives from the flowering process of fruit till harvesting. But the Formaldehyde Metre is only able to detect formalin and some gases.
Out of 1,925 trucks which entered the city from around 8:00pm Wednesday till 6:00am yesterday, a total of 208 trucks were found loaded with fruits and samples from them were tested. But the DMP did not say how many of those 208 trucks were carrying formalin-soaked fruits.
In a briefing at noon yesterday, DMP Joint Commissioner Manirul Islam said the fruit traders had changed strategy. They might have been unloading fruit trucks on the city outskirts and bringing the fruits by other modes of transport, such as buses or covered vans.
The Daily Star visited Aminbazar on Wednesday night to see the arrangements for the drive.
There was a dais in front of a tent set up just after Aminbazar bridge. A bulldozer of Dhaka North City Corporation which had come to destroy formalin-tainted fruits also remained parked nearby.
A police officer was handling the formalin detection work with the formaldehyde metre. A magistrate and an official from BSTI were present there.
Police members were filling a polythene bag with the samples, collected from intercepted trucks. And then the formaldehyde metre was placed into that bag and kept for two minutes.
"If those fruits are tainted with formalin, the formalin would evaporate inside the polythene bag and meter of the machine would delect it and show on the monitor," Khalid Mahmud, focal Point officer of the DMP headquarters, explained while he was testing a sample of tomatoes.
Eight such teams deployed at Postogola Bridge, Waisghat at Sadarghat, Abdullahpur bridge, Dhaur bridge in Ashulia, Babubazar Bridge, Gabtoli, Jatrabari Police Station and the intersection near Kamal bridge at Demra yesterday destroyed a total of 3,000 mounds of mangoes, 200 mounds of berries (jam) and 15 lakh litchis.
A magistrate from one of the spots sent three traders to jail - two for six months and another one for 15 days -while 12 others were fined Tk 85,000, said the DMP joint commissioner in a briefing yesterday.
Apart from mangos, litchis and berries, and the teams also tested fruits, among which were jackfruits, bananas, pineapples and apples.
In the tests, they detected 2.48 to 125 ppm (parts per million) of formalin in mangoes, 1.49 to 31pmm in litchis, 33 to 35ppm in berries. The tolerable level for human is 0.15ppm, he said.
During the visit on Wednesday night, it was seen whenever a truck was crossing the bridge, policemen, signal lights in hand, ran towards the vehicles. With the cops checking all the trucks, long tailbacks were created at all entry points.
FORMALIN POLICY
A rights body has sought a High Court
directive on the government for formulating a policy on import and use of health hazardous formalin.
The Legal Action Bangladesh Foundation yesterday filed the petition with the HC seeking its order on the government also to form an authority to monitor and control the use of the harmful chemical.
The petitioner said formalin was being imported rampantly in the country and being used in fruits, causing harm to people's health as there was no guideline on import and use of the chemical.
Syed Mohidul Kabir, a lawyer for the petitioner, told The Daily Star that the HC may hear the petition next week.
Earlier on May 26, following a writ petition, the HC directed the government to issue a gazette notification within 15 days to enforce the safe food law to prevent food adulteration, and asked the food secretary to submit a report before it by June 16, after complying with the directive.
Yesterday's petition was submitted as a supplementary to the writ petition.