Hazards Of Ripening Fruits With Chemicals

We are consuming poisons rather than nature’s bounty.

- T.Rajagopalan

The Hyderabad High Court caustically addressed the fruit traders who use the carcinogen calcium carbide to ripen the fruits “worse than terrorists” and ordered a thorough probe into the use of this poison and pulled up the concerned officials whose duty was to deeply look into this murderous activity, for turning a Nelson’s eye towards the situation.

A week after the High Court pronounced its considered verdict and asked the respective governments in the states to carry out intensive raids of the shops selling fruits across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh a division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip Bhosale and justice S.V. Bhatt appointed a senior counsel S. Niranjan Reddy as amicus curiae to find out more on the illegal practice and provide a solution.

“For earning some extra rupees you are putting scores of lives at risk. Such traders are worse than terrorists killing generations of people with slow poison,” the acting CJ said. Calcium Carbide is a chemical compound whose two chief products – acetylene, a colourless flammable gas extensively employed as a fuel and Calcium Cyanamide used as fertiliser in agriculture – are highly harmful to the human body.

Contamination unchecked

Most fruit samples lifted from the markets in Hyderabad and Secunderabad twin cities are laden with the harmful Calcium Carbide, food safety officials confirmed. During the raids conducted following the acerbic remarks of the High Court on the unchecked use of toxic chemicals by fruit traders, officials has lifted 15 samples from various markets and found that most of them were chemically ripened.