Sayur Beracun ?
Four months
ago, TEDx had a talk which set tongues
wagging. Something funky was going down up in
Cameron Highlands – food and water is systematically being POISONED
by the farmers themselves!! The
TEDx speakers Dr. Lemuel Ng and Will Chua spoke about how vegetables and
produce there came with its own ‘salad dressing’…by that we mean BANNED pesticides,
not vinaigrette or Thousand Island!
Lemuel
and Will had a contact, a Datuk Kong, who was a rich vegetable farmer up
there, who does not eat a single leaf grown in the highlands. He eats
vegetables from elsewhere. Why? Because the pesticides being used these days
are insane:
“Nowadays they use this black liquid. Unnamed, no
brand, nothing, from Thailand. They don’t even know what it is. They take one
cap of this liquid and mix it with 200 gallons of water and they put it on
their soil. Within one or two days, everything dies. His exact words…
‘everything dies’.” – Will Chua speaking at the TEDx event
Wow, it sounds really alarming the way
they talk about these pesticides and ZOMG what is in that bottle of black stuff
from Thailand? Only one cap needed to mix with 200 gallons of water and
EVERYTHING dies? What sorcery is that?!?
These
two guys were going on and on about how their friends and family had seriously
bad health problems, like couples not being able to conceive, children
having terrible skin allergies and popping strong antibiotics daily, people in
their 30s getting cancer, and 20-year-olds having to do dialysis because of
busted kidneys.
Lemuel,
Will and their friends and family who were getting sick are from Johor. To
understand why they are worried about an issue happening in a completely
different state so many km away from them, is because Singapore buys a bulk of their veggies from Cameron Highlands. And
these veggies pass through Johor to get there, so it also gets sold in Johor.
Thennn, in
comes the part about eating organic vegetables and these guys own a family-run
vegetable farm business called FOLO Farms in
Johor. After switching to organic
veggies some of those seriously bad health problems started to ease up –
couples could finally conceive and children’s skin cleared up. To be fair,
Lemuel did add that he doesn’t have enough cold hard facts to claim that eating
organic vegetables was definitely a cure-all. But he did say this:
“You compare this to pesticide-sprayed, plastic
covered vegetables, those vegetables are basically what we call a ghost of what
real vegetables are. They are basically what we call junk food veggies. If you
want to have phytonutrient-dense, flavourful vegetables that are actually good
for you, that could actually heal you, then we have to grow our own. We have to
grow it organically.” – Dr. Lemuel Ng
Because there are REAL reports of dangerous pesticides in
Cameron Highlands
A
simple Google search will show that pesticide use in the highlands is NOT A
MYTH and not something the speakers were just using to promote their
organically farmed vegetables. There are news reports and even academic papers written about it from as far
back as 2004, possibly older.
Based
on these reports, the types of pesticides found are Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane(DDT), Lindane (gamma hexachlorocyclohexane or HCH), endosulfan II, endrine ketone,
aldrin and DDE (a
derivative of DDT). Gosh, even the names themselves sound positively evil! Like
the kind of poison that wicked queen in Snow White would have used to dip the
apple in.
The whole subject of pesticides is just too
wide and too deep for us to get into, if we were to really break it down,
but in brief, these substances are highly TOXIC and ILLEGAL in Malaysia according to the Pesticides Act, and internationally. It is an offence to posses or to use a
pesticide that is not registered in the Pesticides Act and people who
are found guilty can be fined RM10,000 or a jailed for one year.
But if
that’s the case, why do farmers want to use banned substances rather
than legal ones? Well, it is believed that bugs and pests in Cameron
Highlands are so strong that farmers feel freaky black liquid from
Thailand and such are more effective than the legal stuff.
As for
international laws, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is one body that has
published a recommendations guideline for using
pesticides. Additionally, a UN treaty called the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was signed by 152 countries, including
Malaysia. However, we have not ratified it. (Signing it just means we
agree with it and have the intention to follow it, though it is not
binding, whereas ratifying it is officially binding and we would have to
start forming national laws for it.)
The
Stockholm Convention has a list of substances categorised as to ‘eliminate’ or ‘restrict’, and some of the pesticides
found in the highlands are on it. For instance, there’s aldrin, which was used
globally as a pesticide until the 1970s
when it was banned in most
countries, though Malaysia was kinda late joining the ban-wagon only in 1994. Aldrin was detected in tap water in Cameron Highlands at an
average of 0.071 microgrammes per litre, far above the WHO’s recommended limit of 0.03 microgrammes per litre!
CHUPPPP what
do you mean they found pesticides in TAP WATER??? Aren’t pesticides only
meant to be used on vegetables and produce? Here’s the thing… when pesticides
are used in farms, it affects the surrounding area’s ecology on the whole. After spraying them on, it goes into the soil and eventually gets washed into
rivers and streams, finally contaminating our tap water. They
can also be blown by the wind to other areas. Some pesticides can remain in the
environment for many years and pass from one organism to another.
So yes,
traces of toxic pesticides we mentioned earlier on were discovered by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) researchers, after
they took samples from six sites, including Brinchang tap water,
water catchment areas, and along Sungai Bertam and Sungai Telom (main rivers in Cameron Highlands).
“This is very unnerving. We found contamination
right at the source. I cannot understand how this was allowed to go on.
Although the trace was miniscule and within the permitted level, I am concerned
about the accumulated effect or aggregation of years of consumption on the
internal body system. The effect could take place a couple of generations later
causing birth defects and infertility.” – Prof. Dr. Md Pauzi Abdullah from
the School of Chemical Sciences and Food Technology, UKM, Malay Mail
Yes! Illegal pesticides can cause infertility and tons
of other medical problems to your body
You wouldn’t
spray Ridsect into a cup of water and drink it right? But as creeped out as we
are at the thought of drinking Ridsect, it only has a Class IV toxicity category… now imagine
consuming endosulfan which has been branded
Class I or II (depending on the governing
body). [Class I is very toxic, Class IV is safe. See table below]
Based on studies, exposure to certain pesticides
can cause cancer, birth defects, genetic
changes, blood disorders, nerve disorders, endocrine disruption, and
reproduction effects. Oh man! Basically that’s a full body
disease package. 
On
Google you will find plenty of pesticide poisoning case studies, but let’s focus on India… The
country is one of the largest users of pesticide in Asia and also one of the largest manufacturers. Endosulfan
has been used here for the past 20
years. So much so that toxins have entered their food chain –
breakfast, lunch and dinner.
A study done in Warangal district in Andhra
Pradesh, southern India records over 1,000 pesticide poisoning cases
each year and hundreds of deaths. Data collected from a district
government hospital there from 1997 to 2002 revealed that 8,040
patients were
admitted there due to pesticide poisoning with an overall case
fatality ratio of 22.6%. The effects they are suffering is varied
(some reports of birth
defects, autism, and delays in sexual maturity in boys) and
it has especially hit infants and children hard:
“They are 4.5 years
old. When they were born they were fine. After 2 days they fell sick. They used
to get regular fits and their body’s changed to a blue colour.” – Rajbir Singh, father of twin sons in Punjab, India
If the
poisoning of Cameron Highlands water has been highlighted by the media and researchers
have found traces of
pesticides in water samples, why are the authorities not cracking down on these
farmers? From the timeline, it appears that the problem has been
established some years back, but is still going on up to the time Lemuel and Will spoke at TEDx (which
was four months ago).
One of the
strongest critics of this issue, a community based organisation formed by a
group of residents concerned by the declining environment in Cameron
Highlands, named Regional Environmental Awareness of Cameron Highlands (REACH), had
actively taken the initiative to prove that pesticides were indeed in their
water supply. And now that the UKM researchers had indeed found traces in
water samples, REACH said the authorities would
surely be compelled to take action, including telling the public about it.
“Enforcement of
bans on illegal pesticide is also lacking in effectiveness.”
– Ramakrishnan Ramasamy, REACH President, The Rakyat Post
Aside from
catching farmers who use illegal pesticides, REACH also urged the authorities to control unrestricted farming because
it has also become another part of the problem there. Like our rainforests that
are being cleared in Sabah, Sarawak, Kelantan and Pahang to
build palm oil plantations, vast
lands are being cleared in the
highlands to build more and more and more farms. Unrestricted farming is believed to be the cause
of the devastating mud floods that
killed six people in November 2014.
Effects believed to be caused by endosulfan
poisoning. Images from keralabhumi.blogspot.my and newamericamedia.org
Ridsect only Class IV. Toxicity table from animhosnan.blogspot.my
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.