National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has again warned that consuming fruits ripened with calcium carbide is dangerous to health.
The agency’s director-general, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye handed the warning at a one-day North-Central media sensitisation workshop on the dangers of drug hawking and ripening of fruits with calcium carbide in Lafia.
Represented by Dr Leonard Omokpariola, director of Chemical Evaluation and Research of the agency, Adeyeye said consumption of calcium ripened fruits have resulted in loss of lives of many unsuspecting members of the public in the past.
“Calcium Carbide, when sprayed with water, reacts chemically to produce acetylene, which acts like ethylene and ripens fruits by a similar process.
“Calcium carbide generally contains impurities such as arsenic, lead particles, phosphorus, etc., that pose several very serious health hazards. Consumption of fruits containing these impurities may cause cancer, heart, kidney, and liver failure,” she explained.
She advised people to adopt natural methods of ripening mature fruits such as the use of paper bags, flour, rice, decomposing apple and banana peels.
She warned that the agency would soon commence clampdown on persons caught using calcium carbide to ripen fruits.
The director-general also decried the activities of unlicensed drug dealers especially hawkers, describing them as agents of death
He said drug hawking poses a serious challenge to the healthcare delivery system in the country, adding that exposure of essential and life-saving medicines to the vagaries of inclement weather, degraded the active ingredients of medicines and turned them to poisons thus endangering human lives.