07/25/23 | By Wudan Yan | Undark | Republished by CHD
Pictures by Undark
A study published in Environmental Research documents how Bangladesh turmeric traders commonly added toxic lead to enhance color, until scientists informed them of the health risks in 2019. Testing, raids and campaigns slashed adulterated samples from 47% to 0%. But constant vigilance is required.
Photographs by Wudan Yan for Undark
Before the heat of the day set in, dozens of people were already gathered under a large banyan tree at the twice-weekly turmeric market in Ataikula, Bangladesh. The season for harvesting turmeric was quickly coming to an end.
Those who had arrived watched from the shade as other farmers brought their haul on motorbikes and auto rickshaws on the dirt road, their harvests to be combined in large piles atop orange and blue tarpaulin mats. Traders would buy however much they wanted in bulk.
Mohammad Abdullah Sheikh wandered around the market helping farmers weigh their sacks and traders make their purchases. Over the last 30 years, he’s become well acquainted with the space, as his turmeric processing business and trading facilities are headquartered next door.
He buys most of his turmeric from this market and processes it to sell to larger food manufacturers and wholesalers across the country.
For most of his turmeric trading career, Sheikh engaged in an open secret: While processing raw turmeric to powder, he added a chemical called lead chromate to get the tubers to glow yellow.
Sheikh and the locals refer to the compound as peuri — and nearly all the farmers and traders at the market are familiar with it. Lead chromate is a chemical used in paints to, for instance, make school buses yellow, and it can enhance the radiance of turmeric roots, making them more attractive to buyers.
For decades, Sheikh didn’t know the exact harm that peuri could cause. That changed in the fall of 2019, when researchers from the nonprofit International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, or ICDDR,B, traveled to Ataikula and adjacent districts in the northwest to meet with Sheikh and others in the turmeric business.
The researchers warned them that consuming lead chromate could lead to kidney and brain damage or cause developmental delays in children. By that point, the spice had made its way out of the country: The problem had already gone global.
That outreach was the culmination of years of work conducted by an international group of researchers, including a research scientist at Stanford University. They worked together with the ICDDR,B and Bangladesh’s Food Safety Authority to protect the country’s food supply from further lead exposure.
The impacts of this intervention were significant and summarized in a study published recently in the science journal Environmental Research. When researchers sampled and tested turmeric across the country before and after the intervention, the level of adulteration in this one study dropped from 47% to 0%.
For most of his turmeric trading career in Ataikula, Bangladesh, Mohammad Abdullah Sheikh added lead chromate to the spice to enhance its economic value — an open secret in the business. But then he became aware of the harm the chemical can cause.
The use of peuri in turmeric renders the food fraudulent, as it is done purposefully to alter the commodity for economic gain. Instances of food fraud are notoriously difficult to resolve, said Michael Roberts, expert on the regulation of food fraud, and executive director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
Often, the economic incentives just aren’t there for authentically made food. Processors are likely to increase their margins if they cheat.
Fighting food fraud isn’t easy, and experts have a range of ideas on how to do it. Some approaches rely heavily on scientific testing while others work through undercover investigations. Regardless of the method, rooting out food fraud requires constant surveillance across long and complex supply chains.
In this sense, Bangladesh’s success is noteworthy, said Roberts, who was not involved in the project to eliminate lead chromate from turmeric. “It’s unusual that this kind of campaign takes place, whether in developed or developing countries,” he said, and there are lessons from this case study that could be applied to other commodities.
Native to South Asia, turmeric has been used for thousands of years as both a culinary and a medicinal ingredient. In Bangladesh, it is often planted in the middle of the year and requires nine to 10 months to mature before it’s harvested.
Precipitation during the monsoon season is critical: A generous amount of rain will allow for the root to bloom, shooting off additional roots, known as “fingers,” from the bulb.
Eskandar Molla, a farmer from northwest Bangladesh, has been growing turmeric for over 50 years. He sells his fresh turmeric fingers at nearby Hazir Hat, an open-air market.
There, he gets paid a market rate for what he sells: In March of this year, it was around 1,400 taka (about $13 USD) for an 88-pound satchel. Middlemen, who have the facilities to boil and dry the root, buy it from him and other farmers.
Getting the moisture out is critical for the root to be pulsed into powder. Traders lay out a single layer of turmeric fingers in vast, sunny, open fields for a month. Workers manually go through and inspect for roots that are either too long, too fat, or too skinny.
Once dried, the turmeric fingers are polished. Here, they are dumped into large “drums,” which are turned by hand or motorized. This continual physical agitation removes the outer skin of the turmeric to reveal the true color of the root.
It’s in this step that lead chromate would be used to enhance color. Once polished, the roots are then ground to a fine golden powder.