THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Beans produced within the state are also not safe to eat, going by the findings of the scientists at the pesticide residue lab at Kerala Agricultural University, Vellayani. They have found poisonous pesticides in beans after testing samples of vegetables and spices from across the state under the ‘safe to eat’ category. However, vegetables required to prepare Onasadya, like tomato, ladies finger, snake gourd, bitter gourd, broad beans, brinjal, potato, onion, shallots, carrot, yam and colocasia roots were found to be free from pesticides.
But beans, curry leaves, green chilli, mint leaves, coriander leaves, palak spinach, beetroot and ivy gourd (kovakka) were laced with pesticides. The latest drive by the agriculture department to trace the pesticide residue in vegetables was undertaken in the light of the Onam festival. A KAU official told this newspaper: “This is for the first time since 2013 that beans have been found to contain deadly pesticides. A single sample from Kozhikode had malathion (0.32 parts per million), ethion (0.28 ppm), lambda cyhalothrin (0.17 ppm) and also the banned deadly pesticide in Kerala, profenofos (0.48 ppm).”
The Thiruvananthapuram unit of food safety officials found that a sample of curry leaves contained profenofos (4.07 ppm), triazophos (2.2 ppm), fenpropathrin (0.28 ppm), cyfluthrin (0.06 ppm). Similarly samples of coriander leaves collected from Kazhakoottam were tested positive for profenofos (1.08 ppm) and lambda cyhalothrin (0.06 ppm). Chilli brought from neighbouring states and collected from Nedumangad and Manjeri were found to have profenofos (0.6 ppm) and triazophos (0.65 ppm). Palak spinach samples collected from Thiruvananthapuram contained fenvalerate (0.38 ppm). Curry leaves collected from Manjeshwaram had chlorpyrifos (0.29 ppm) and chilli had triazophos (0.65 ppm).
Food safety officials say that veggies coming from across the border have to be checked regularly to stop the flow of poison-laced vegetables. The food safety intelligence officials and mobile vigilance squad collected the maximum number of samples (46) from Thiruvananthapuram district.
