Chemical Residues in Food Grains: The Burning Health Issues in Asian Countries

What is it about?

Around 600 million food borne illnesses and 420,000 deaths occur each year due to poor food handling practice. Such contaminants get access to contaminate food mainly due to food handler’s poor knowledge and negligence during handling activities. Accordingly, alternative methods for exposure and risk assessment have to be developed, which vary from the use of expert opinion and pre-marketing models to the use of combination of data from the literature, measurements, and expert opinion. Many studies are there to overcome fertilizer/pesticide induced health effects. Rastogi et.al, 2019 reported use of silicone nanoparticles can provide green and eco-friendly alternatives to various chemical fertilizers without harming nature. It has been reported that selenium (Se) application decreases Cd uptake. In similar studies, selenium, copper, zinc oxide and many other metallic nanoparticles have been studied in food processing, packaging and preservation against phytopathogens and rodents. The washing with water or soaking in solutions of salt and some chemicals e.g. chlorine, chlorine dioxide, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, acetic acid, hydroxy peracetic acid, iprodione and detergents are reported to be highly effective in reducing the level of pesticides. Various food- processing operations include sorting, trimming, cleaning, cooking, baking, frying, roasting, flaking, and extrusion that have variable effects on mycotoxins. Cooking rice in excess water efficiently reduces the amount of arsenic (As) in the cooked grain.

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Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash

Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash