This may be so. However, there is more to the humble banana that a nutritional snack.
Chemicals! And considerable quantities of them. So what, you may ask. Just peel off the skin and the banana inside is clean and healthy?
Bananas are grown in many equatorial countries around the world. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Equador, Chili, Phillipines, India mainly by the three main companies Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte. Bananas require a rich peaty soil and a hot climate.
They also require numerous chemicals because of a number of pests and diseases.
Plantations in Central America apply 30 kilograms of active ingredients per hectare per season ? more than ten times the average for intensive agriculture in industrialised countries.
- Fungicides: Aerial spraying up to 40 times per year. Mancozebare is a suspected carcinogen.
- Nematicides: Applied 3 of 4 times a year. Designed to kill parasitic nematode worms, and are extremely dangerous.
- Insecticides: Like chlorpyrifos impregnated into plastic bags placed around bunches.
- Herbicides: Sprayed between 8 and 12 times a year. Glysophate is a suspected carcinogen.
- Fertiliser: Applied regularly.
- Disinfectants: After harvest, the fruit is washed with tisabendazol and aluminium sulphate, which can cause severe dermatitis in direct contact with human skin.
- New Zealand Fumigation: Hydrogen Cyanide
- Paraquat still used today in Costa Rica (banned in Finland, Sweden, Norway). Described by World Health Organisation as "one of the most dangerous chemicals in the world". Between 1980 and 1989, 248 people died from Paraquat poisoning in Costa Rica. Paraquat is endorsed by the NZ government agency Crop & Food for use on potatoes and kumara.
Bananas receive more applications of toxic chemicals than any fruit or vegetable in the world. Because of the non-existent monitoring in equatorial countries, the use of dangerous compounds goes unchecked.
The result is that the banana you thought was clean and healthy is full of chemicals that have known health risks. Because up to 40 applications of fungicides (not counting herbicides, insecticides, disinfectants, and fumigation) are applied during the growing season, it most certainly gets right into the edible fruit.
Workers in many of the banana countries are not provided with protective clothing when applying these chemicals, or when they are applied from the air. Almost all men working in banana plantations in Central America, Carribean, Phillipines and West Africa are now completely sterile because of the use of DBCP.
For every ton of bananas cultivated, nearly 2 tons of rotting waste are left behind, including chlorpyrifos impregnated plastic bags. Huge swathes of rainforest are cleared each year to expand plantations.
Think again before indulging in the tasty banana. The toxic chemicals can be absorbed through your skin as well as when you eat them. Many of the chemicals accumulate in your body. The more you eat, the higher the concentrations become.
The result is that the banana you thought was clean and healthy is full of chemicals that have known health risks. Because up to 40 applications of fungicides (not counting herbicides, insecticides, disinfectants, and fumigation) are applied during the growing season, it most certainly gets right into the edible fruit.
Workers in many of the banana countries are not provided with protective clothing when applying these chemicals, or when they are applied from the air. Almost all men working in banana plantations in Central America, Carribean, Phillipines and West Africa are now completely sterile because of the use of DBCP.
For every ton of bananas cultivated, nearly 2 tons of rotting waste are left behind, including chlorpyrifos impregnated plastic bags. Huge swathes of rainforest are cleared each year to expand plantations.
Think again before indulging in the tasty banana. The toxic chemicals can be absorbed through your skin as well as when you eat them. Many of the chemicals accumulate in your body. The more you eat, the higher the concentrations become.
Why hasn't this been picked up by the media? or the MoH? or someone.
ReplyDelete