Consumers express fears of the safety of consuming beans as the European Union (EU) has temporarily banned dried beans importation from Nigeria because of the high levels of dichlorvos pesticide in the beans which poses serious risk to the health of the consumers.
Also high levels of other chemicals like Chlorpyrifos, Cyhalothrin, Dimathoate, Trichlorphon and Omethoate were also discovered in the dried beans.
These are all pesticides that are intentionally applied to plants to attack invertebrate pest and plant diseases and also utilised in the storage of beans, but the presence of their residues proves high risk to human health.
Most of the rejected dried beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per kilogramme and 4.6mg/kg of the dichlorvos pesticide when its acceptable maximum residue level in the product is 0.01mg/kg.
Dichlorvos is considered to be highly toxic and if ingested can result in convulsions, dizziness, sweating, difficulty in breathing, abdominal cramping, diarrhoea, vomiting and loss of consciousness. It is a confirmed human carcinogen and is a suspected endocrine system disruptor.
The ban was confirmed at an export forum by the Deputy Director, Ports Inspection Directorate, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs. Comfort Makanjuola.
Speaking at the forum organised by Rays of Light Empowerment Initiative in Lagos, Makanjuola said that the EU suspended the importation of dried beans originating from Nigeria until June 30th 2016.
Also, consumers who are unfortunate to consume such meals, are likely to have reduced motor skills “though those symptoms are often very subtle and may be the reasons it has not become very noticeable in Nigerians,” added Dr. Femi Ajayi, a paediatrician with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba Lagos.
Explaining further, Ajayi said that other possible health effects that can result from bean meals made from beans with high levels of pesticide residue include asthma, allergies, hypersensitivity.
“Pesticide exposure is also linked with cancer, hormone disruption and problems with reproduction and foetal development,” he noted.
According to information outlined in the EU Commission Implementing Regulation 2015/943, 50 notifications have been issued since January 2013 through its alert system to Nigeria concerning dried beans containing high levels of dichlorvos pesticide.
Further information revealed that 13 border rejection alerts on dried beans had been issued by the United Kingdom authorities between January to July 1st 2015.
Now the questions that come upper most in mind are where is the rejected dried beans and where did they originate from? Asked a food nutritionist at LUTH, Idi- Araba Lagos.
Proffering answers, a female top civil servant who requested anonymity said, “the answers, of course, are not farfetched. The rejected beans have gone to the open market. In terms of origin, the beans originated from the same source that the current beans in the open markets came from.”
Just about a week ago, a close friend of mine complained about the taste of the bean meal she made. According to her, she said she bought the dried beans in her Ikeja neigbourhood but noticed it tasted somehow as if it had some form of kerosene contaminate.
Giving high lights of the findings from the study, National Coordinator of the World Bank Assisted Programme in Nigeria, Prof. Damian Chikwendu, described Nigeria as a home to uncontrolled market of outdated, substandard and unscrupulous pesticide which he said are mostly peddled and used by people with no real expertise on them.
Of a total of 360 farmers that were interviewed in 57 Local Government Areas across the nine states (Abia, Benue, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Oyo), WAPP-Nig National Coordinator disclosed that about 92% of them admitted to the use of pesticide in varying proportions.
This, however, comes with a worrying trend as Prof. Chikwendu said “one noticeable trend is that most of the people who sell and use these pesticides have little knowledge of them. They do not even know how to use it.”
Citing records from the studies, he said that not less than 74% of the farmers purchase their pesticides from the open markets, disclosing that only a paltry 8-12% of them obtain theirs from farmer groups and cooperatives, government agencies and Non Governmental Organisations (NGO).
On how the pesticides are used, the result found that most of the applications were done by the famers themselves while a smaller fraction of them employ the services of hired applicators and family members using ‘knap snack’ sprayer.
“These days, we hear of cancers and all manners of health conditions. So many of these are related to the poor use of chemicals like pesticides. Many farmers use these chemicals to protect their beans and other crops and the effects are obvious,” lamented Ckikwendu.