What about oil, eggs, pulses, vegetables?

Lead isn’t only in food. And foodstuff isn’t the only item that violates safety standards. The air you breathe, the water you drink, even your walls could hold the main toxin that Maggi noodles are suspected to contain. As one can see, we are surrounded by food that is contaminated, adulterated and does not meet Indian safety and packaging standards

Maggi two-minute noodles is only the latest food item to be found violative of food safety standards in India. Consider this: 64 per cent of loose edible oils sold in Mumbai is adulterated, according to a study conducted last year by the Consumer Guidance Society of India. The study tested 291 samples of sesame oil, coconut oil, groundnut oil, mustard oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil and soybean oil. This apart, arsenic above “critical limits” was found in cereals, pulses, vegetables, roots and tubers. Cadmium above similar criticality was found in cereals, fruits and curd, in a 2013 MS University of Baroda study.

Both heavy metals are toxic to human beings. Looking at other items, 28 per cent of eggs sampled in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, Dehradun and Izatnagar towns were contaminated with E. Coli (effects are said to include diarrhoea, urinary and respiratory infections and pneumonia) and 5 per cent with multi-drug resistant salmonella bacteria (Effects: diarrhoea, fever, cramps), says a 2013 study by the Indian Veterinary Research Institute. More than half of all duck eggs – a local staple in Kerala -- sampled in the prosperous town of Kottayam were contaminated with salmonella.

Nearly 69 per cent of 1,791 milk samples in a nationwide study did not conform to Indian standards (though they weren’t necessarily unsafe). Milk, as IndiaSpend reported earlier, is one of the most-commonly adulterated food items in India, followed by oil and eggs. The permissible limit of lead in food items like Maggi is 2.5 parts per million (ppm), according to food safety regulations of 2011. Maggi samples analysed by the Uttar Pradesh watchdog were found to have lead concentration nearly seven times higher at 17.2 ppm, raising fears of possible lead poisoning among consumers.

The findings of the Uttar Pradesh regulator prompted several states to conduct similar tests on Maggi. Since health is a state subject, states have their own regulators to test if the food stuff adheres to safety regulations. Yet, lead isn’t only in food. And foodstuff isn’t the only item that violates safety standards. The air you breathe, the water you drink, even your walls could hold the main toxin that Maggi noodles are suspected to contain. Lead is also present in household paint.

A third of enamel paints analysed had lead concentration above 10,000 ppm – 111 times more than the prescribed norm of 90 ppm by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), according to a recent study by Toxics Link. The study tested 101 enamel paints, of which 32 paints revealed high lead concentrations. All 32 paints were made by small and medium enterprises. Lead and other carcinogenic heavy metals have also been commonly found in everything from spinach in Delhi and Nagpur to brinjal, tomato and beans in West Bengal.

Indeed, there are few vegetables that do not display lead contamination, primarily deposited from vehicular exhaust, as this 2013 study of carrot, radish, beet, cabbage and other vegetables in West Bengal revealed. The bottom line also is India has not kept pace with its toxins. Detection is crucial to counter the growing problem of food adulteration, but the country has not established enough testing laboratories.

But as IndiaSpend finds, India has only 148 food-testing laboratories. This means, each laboratory serves 88 million people. China, by contrast, has one laboratory for every 0.2 million people. The percentage of food samples found not conforming to the regulations increased from 12.77 per cent in 2011-12 to 18.80 percent in 2013-14 – a six percentage-point increase over three years, as per national food watchdog data.

By Abheet Singh Sethi