Around a year ago Nepali media was saturated with stories on pesticide overkill in our vegetable farms. It all started when the government imported a device called spectrophotometer to measure pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables. When the meter was installed at the Kalimati Fruits and Vegetables Market, the biggest fruit wholesaler in Nepal, the results it obtained were scandalous. Fifty percent of tested samples registered a pesticide score of 90 or above in the meter, more than three times the safety limit prescribed by the World Health Organization. No sample of vegetable registered a score of under 30, which would make them safe for consumption.
This means that if you have been living in Kathmandu for at least a year, you will have ingested plenty of pesticides, whether you like to cook at home or eat outside. Following such revelations, our laws were changed to make it easier to punish our pesticide-loving farmers. They, we were told, would also be educated on the dangers of chemical fertilizers, even to their own health. Market monitoring was also stepped up. But as often happens with our public initiatives, the issue was conveniently forgotten soon as it stopped making headlines.
Killing us softly
The situation today is apparently no better than it was a year ago. A recent study conducted by the Agriculture and Forest University in Chitwan district found that around 70 percent of pesticides used by local farmers are banned in Nepal. It turns out that most of these farmers don't even know that the chemicals they are handling is putting them, more than the consumers of their produce, in the harm's way. It gets worse. Of the 25 chemical fertilizer retailers the researchers visited, more than a third were not aware that many of their products were outlawed. There, in other words, is zero oversight over these public health hazards. This is inexcusable. The consumers of these pesticide-laden food items, according to health experts, are six times more prone to all types of cancers than the consumers of vegetables produced using natural fertilizers.
This is just an example. Our entire range of milk products might be tainted. The Department of Food Technology and Quality Control (DFTQC) has repeatedly found dangerous levels of coliform bacteria and caustic soda, another proven carcinogen, in the packets of milk available in the market. But there seems to have been no initiative to punish their manufacturers.
As with our whites, so with our greens. The meter at Kalimati is still operational—or so we are told. If it is still functioning, why haven't the results of on-site tests been made public? Periodic briefings on issues of public interest are, in fact, the hallmark of an accountable government. Without such transparency, people's trust in their government erodes over time, and with it, their faith in the democratic process. What came of the plan to import more meters and install them at other major vegetable markets in Nepal, people are wondering. Yes, they are bothered by the political mess in their country. But they are much-much more concerned about the health and wellbeing of their families. What good is a government, they are asking, that can't even punish the most egregious violators of their trust?
