Toxic ice creams put Sirajganj kids at serious health risk

3 December 2009, 17:00 PM

Golam Mostafa Jibon, Sirajganj

Unaware of the danger of the toxic ingredients used to prepare the favourite item, a child savours a coloured ice cream at Sirajganj. Photo: STAR

Around 500 factories in Sirajganj are producing ice creams with harmful chemicals posing a serious health hazard to the ice-cream lovers particularly children. Intake of chemical-mixed ice creams often cause them various diseases like stomach pain, diarrhoea and dysentery. "Children may suffer from deadly diseases like cancer and kidney infection if they take such harmful chemical and colour mixed ice creams regularly," said local pediatrician Dr Quamrul Hasan Parvez. Health of school-going kids is at serious risk as they take these low quality ice creams at schools, he added. During a spot investigation for about a week recently, this correspondent found that about 500 ice cream factories have been set up in the district without the knowledge of the authorities. These factories are producing ice creams in most unhygienic way with low quality ingredients due to lack of supervision by the authorities concerned. Most factory owners are ignorant of the food act as they use harmful ingredients, including impure water, arrowroot, toxic dye, flavour, soda, date expired powder milk and saccharin, in ice creams. They are using arrowroot as alternative to milk while saccharin in place of sugar. Besides, they often use contaminated water from local ponds or canals. On the other hand, most of the factories do not have trade licence, sanitary certificate and even BSTI (Bangladesh Standard Testing Institute) approval, which are a must for running business. According to a source at the local Civil Surgeon Office, only 46 factories out of 500 have got sanitary and fitness certificates from their offices while the rests are running without their acknowledgement. While visiting a number of ice cream factories on AK Fazlul Haque Road and at Mirpur, Kandapara and Kalibari in the town this correspondent had the same impression. In most of those factories the labourers were mixing the ingredients without wearing hand gloves although most of them were suffering from skin diseases. There were also no monitoring of qualities or expiry date on ice cream packets. Contacted, Chand Mia and Ekram Ali, proprietors of Chand-Yesmin Super Ice Cream Factory and Mina Ice Cream Factory respectively, admitted that they were carrying on their business by 'managing' some officials of the health department. They disclosed that they pay Tk 200 each to a number of policemen and sanitary inspector regularly. "We produce ice creams three to four months of a year. During the period, we collect ingredients from the local shops and they supply materials as per our demand," said Soleman Ali, owner of Kanok Super Ice Cream Factory on AK Fazlul Haque Road in the town. Nur-e-Alam Liton, proprietor of Shuvo Super Ice Cream Factory, also admitted that he collected certificate from the sanitary inspector bribing him Tk 1000. Contacted, Ram Pado Shaha, district sanitary inspector, however, denied the allegation. Expressing surprise, Civil Surgeon of Sirajganj Lutfor Rahman told The Daily Star he can not believe how these unhygienic and illegal factories were running under the nose of the authorities. He, however, said that he would look into the matter and ask the district sanitary inspectors to take necessary action in this regard.