After excessive levels of harmful lead were found in the turmeric powder sold in Bangladesh's markets, the Prime Minister's Office has asked for turmeric exports to be halted.
Lead was detected in turmeric in a study by the health research organisation icddr,b and Stanford University in the United States. Lead harms the human body, in particular hindering brain development in pregnant women's children.
Against that background, the government's Bangladesh Food Safety Authority held a meeting with the country's spice-producing companies on Monday.
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In their study, icddr,b and Stanford University detected lead, or lead chromate, in 20 per cent of turmeric samples collected before grinding from markets in nine districts of Bangladesh.
The presence of lead was first detected by icddr,b researcher Dr Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman. He says turmeric is rubbed before sale to make it brighter, and this happens at the wholesaler level.
"Lead is being used to make turmeric brighter. It is rubbed onto whole turmeric. Turmeric is even sent to the wholesalers or traders at district level with the instruction: brighten this up for me with lead," he says.
A video showed a kind of powder being sprinkled into a large basket and the turmeric being rubbed by people wearing a special kind of shoe on their feet.
Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
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