A high level of heavy metals has found in red spinach and vegetables as farmers randomly using pesticides to grow these crops.

Harmful heavy metals are found in vegetables like red spinach cabbage and beans, cucumbers, radishes and potatoes. Not only vegetables, but also poisonous metals have found in mango, litchi and other fruits. As a result, the health risk of people is increasing gradually.

Experts say that the impact of these heavy metals on the human food cycle is not immediately visible, but in the long run it can cause major health risks. To reduce the risk, uses of pesticide should be stopped, they said.

At the same time the use of fertilizers and pesticides should be made 'safe' to control heavy metals. It is also important to ensure that imported pesticides do not contain heavy metals.

On Monday (September 23), the results of studies on the presence of heavy metals in nine vegetables and pesticide residues in four fruits were presented at a seminar organized by the Safe Food Authority in the capital.

Recently the professors of Bangladesh Agricultural University Shafiqul Islam and Dr. Mohammad Ghulam Kibria collected vegetable samples from the market for the study.      

It found that high levels chemicals including lead, chromium, cadmium in these vegetables. However, in this list, the presence of heavy metal in the most harmful levels was found in red spinach.

Bangladesh Safe Food Authority has conducted two separate studies to find out the presence of harmful substances in vegetables and fruits. These studies have found excessive amounts of chemicals and pesticide residues in vegetables.

Studies have shown that red spinach has the highest amount of heavy metals like cadmium. While the maximum tolerable level of cadmium is 190 micrograms per kg, in red spinach it was found to be 704.32 micrograms per kg, 275.66 micrograms per kg were found in brinjal, 349 micrograms in radish and 195 micrograms per kg in tomatoes. The highest presence of cadmium was found from the sample collected from Narayanganj.

Similarly, excessive presence of heavy metals such as chromium has been found in beans, cucumbers, radishes, potatoes and radishes. The presence of heavy metals like lead was found in nine vegetables including eggplant, cabbage, beans, cucumber, radish, potato, tomato and red cabbage.

Meanwhile, 320 samples of mangoes, litchis, plums and guavas were tested for pesticide residues, and an average of 10 per cent of those were containing harmful levels of pesticides.