Watch out! Banned chemical dyes poisoning your platter

VISAKHAPATNAM: That yellow-tinted appetizing dum biryani from restaurants or the silver-coated kaju barfi from sweet shops that denizens love to treat themselves to may not be at all safe for consumption and have severe health implications. Despite a government ban on toxic chemical dyes like metalin yellow and silver, food adulteration using these chemical colours is going on unchecked in Port City.

In fact, biryani samples collected recently from a popular restaurant in Rushikonda revealed the presence of metalin yellow. This banned chemical substance was also found in daal and other cooked curries and biryani in eateries in RTC Complex and Maddilapalem area. Similarly, the chemically-induced silver colour layer is used by most sweets shops to make the products look attractive. Ideally, a thin silver sheet should be placed on the sweets but lab analysis found that almost all sweet shops, with an eye on profits, use cheap tin foil that is a toxic heavy metal.

The city, which has a population of around 22 lakh and hundreds of eating joints, just has three food inspectors and no exclusive food safety inspection department in GVMC to keep an eye on things. Regarding this unchecked adulteration, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL — Number 161 of 2015) has also just been filed in the AP High Court by a city-based lawyer and is coming up for hearing before the chief justice on Monday.

Senior advocate and social activist IM Ahmed said, "Alarmed at the rising incidence of food adulteration and lack of proper inspection, I have filed this PIL in the high court. GVMC runs the show with just three inspectors and does not even have vehicles for inspection. Moreover, most of the restaurants and hotels are owned by politicians and their relatives. Therefore, the government officials don't want to enter into disputes with them and issue trade licenses to anyone who asks and pays for it."

"Had there been proper and unbiased inspection of all small and big eateries, most food centres would have failed the lab test either for adulterating food with banned chemical colours or for using food colours beyond the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) permissible limit. During Ramzan and Eid, almost everyone eats haleem. But even the colour of the cooked chicken and mutton haleem is not uniform. Sometimes it's brown, sometimes yellow and at times dark brown. Haleem samples too should be lifted for lab analysis. Besides, it should be made mandatory for eateries to display inspection certificates," he added.

According to experts, the presence of these toxic and carcinogenic chemical dyes used in food has several adverse impacts on health and can cause irreparable damage to the kidneys and also affect the liver, the two most vital organs. Professor Nageshwar Rao from the chemistry department of Andhra University, explained, "The chemical dyes affect the nephrons and when the kidney can't filter the chemicals, they get deposited in the kidneys and lead to chronic kidney diseases. Again, the toxic and poisonous substances are sent by the body to the liver for treating or processing. When they can't be treated, they start depositing the substance in the liver. After a while, the deposits cause degeneration of the liver and eventually cause liver cancer."

Apart from the more harmful synthetic dyes used as food colouring substances in eateries, bakeries and confectionaries, at times relatively less harmful metal salts are used in raw food, for instance copper sulphate to impart green colour to vegetables. "Metal salts usually escape the screening process meant to detect chemical dyes. They pass off as natural colours in High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) Test," added Prof Rao.

KN Swaroop, deputy food controller, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Andhra Pradesh, said, "First of all, GVMC doesn't have a separate food safety or food inspection department due to which sanitary inspectors double up as food safety officers. It comes under the medical and health department of GVMC. The previous GVMC commissioner had designated sanitary inspectors as full time food safety officers and there's no separate post for food inspectors. They also have just three inspectors for the entire GVMC limits."

Statistics procured through RTI

Vizag City has a population of around 22 lakh and an area of almost 682 sq km

Fast food selling centres: 254

Restaurants: 170

Hotels: 46

Canteens: 38

Trolley sale or push cart vendors: 3,280

Total number of food safety officers: 3

Food samples collected annually for lab analysis —Around 650.

Food samples collected between January and May 2015 — 127

Food samples that failed lab test and were found to be adulterated — 54.

DEADLY DELICACIES

Insomnia and nervous system related diseases

Allergy and skin diseases

Psychological and thyroid problems

Increase in harmful blood cells

Cancer

Kidney ailments