Nigeria Bans 30 Pesticides After Deaths

Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has banned the sale and supply of 30 agrochemical products, according to the Nigeria-based Vanguard news service.

NAFDAC Director-General, Dora Akunyili, said that the ban became necessary when it was discovered that the pesticides were causing food poisoning that had resulted in multiple deaths after consumers had eaten food crops with high levels the chemicals.

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“We got report that many people in Bekwarra LGA of Cross River State suffered from food poisoning due to ingestion of moi-moi and beans. A total of 112 people were hospitalised and the deaths of two children were recorded,” Akuntili said.

“The moi-moi and beans from the homes of the victims and from open markets in Taraba and Benue states were collected for laboratory analysis. The laboratory report revealed outrageously high levels of organophosphates, carbamates, fenithrothion, and chloropyrifos, that are highly toxic pesticides,” she continued.

“We got another report that over 120 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Doma, Gombe were rushed to Gombe Specialist Hospital after consuming a meal of beans suspected to have been preserved with poisonous chemicals,” she said. “Samples were again taken to our laboratory and it was discovered that the foodstuffs contained outrageously high levels of lindane, an organochlorinated pesticide commonly called Gammallin that affects the nervous system, producing a range of symptoms from nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness to seizure, convulsion, and death.”

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Following these tragic incidents, NAFDAC said Nigerians should stop using agrochemicals that are not approved by the agency and should desist from the dangerous practice of using Gammallin to harvest fish.

Some of the banned pesticides are aldrin, binapacryl, captafol, chlordane, chlordimeform, DDT, dieldrin, dinoseb, ethylene dichloride, heptaclor, lindane, parathion, phosphamidon, monocroptophos, methamidophos, chlorobenzilate, toxaphene, endrin, merix endosulfan, delta HCH, and ethylene oxide.

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