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To some, it may seem that the controversy over pesticides in Cola drinks is being blown out of proportion. Many others feel that Coke and Pepsi - the poor little rich corporations -- are being unfairly targeted. Still others say it's not just "Ganda Matlab Coca Cola". That virtually all our vegetables, all our water, all our fish, milk and meat are contaminated with one or the other poison. A few even agree with Pepsi icon Shahrukh Khan's reported statement that "We are a filthy country.
If science and caution are our guide-rails, then both the magnitude of the current controversy and the choice of targets are arguably justified. The question is not merely whether cola drinks should be banned or restricted. That should merely be the first step. The bigger question is whether that is all the government proposes to do, or whether this opportunity will prompt the government, our politicians and the media to engage in some serious soul-searching and go beyond the sensationalism of a cola controversy to address the roots of the problem and its different manifestations.
Even the Centre for Science and Environment is blinkered in its view of the cola controversy it has authored. On NDTV, on August 9, a CSE spokesperson suggested that CSE had no problems with aerated soft drinks as long as they adhere to the pesticide residue norms.
With or without pesticides, aerated and super-sweetened soft drinks are bad for your children. Consider this: Colas are mainly phosphoric acid, sugar, flavouring agents and proprietary ingredients. Phosphoric acid is corrosive; it can clean the rust of a nail. In human body, excess phosphorus can throw the calcium balance out of kilter leading to calcium depletion from bones and teeth. The result: a weakening of your skeletal and dental systems. Excess sugar is what increases your girth. And, of course, we don't know what the secret ingredients can do.
In the US and other western countries, evidence linking soft drinks to a growing obesity epidemic particularly among young consumers, is mounting. The Indian middle-class, which thinks it is following faithfully in the footsteps of its cultural master, the United States, is a little behind the times. While school after Indian school shamelessly falls prey to offers of canteen sponsorship by Coke or Pepsi, educational institutions in the United States are finally moving away from fizzy pop for health and ethical reasons. In June 2006, the powerful American Medical Association called for the introduction of a "fat tax" on Coke and Pepsi. Considering the evidence, endorsements by celebrities like Aamir and Shahrukh Khan, and the failure of educational institutions to heed the pleas of youth groups to keep these sugar bombs out of students' reach are deplorable.
Youth for Social Change, a Chennai-based youth collective, recently launched a campaign to urge Aamir to stop endorsing Coke. The merchants of cool must realise that marketing Coke is no longer thanda.
Somehow, evidence that Coke and Pepsi were mining scarce groundwater to cater to the nutritionally damaging cravings of affluent consumers, or that Coke was implicated in union-busting and bumping off labour leaders in Central America using death squads, was not sufficient reason for any of India's institutions - public, private or educational -- to keep these companies out. In Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, the bastion of progressive thought, a small band of students had to force a full-fledged student union debate and resolution to keep Coke out.
For some products like soft drinks, banning or restricting is an option and should be exercised. Even if Indian water is tainted, any private player marketing a "safe" product has to deploy the requisite technology to ensure that the product is really safe. It is true that the governments that have banned Coke and Pepsi haven't banned cigarettes and alcohol. But cigarettes and alcohol are not meant to be sold to minors, and tobacco and alcohol companies are forbidden from targeting youth with their advertisements.
But what about the other things we consume that are scientifically proven to be contaminated? Human breast milk, particularly in India, contains high levels of pesticides. An article on this website reports from a 1993 study in Punjab that "all 244 samples of milk and milk products, and all 130 samples of human breast milk contained residues of DDT". The same article cites a different study that found that the "daily DDT intake of breast-fed infants in Delhi is 46 times higher than safe limits prescribed by international watchdog organisations". All said and done, the benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh the risks. But if that balance were to change, the impact on public health would be disastrous.
A 2002 study by Indian Council for Medical Research found more than 50% of food samples tested to be contaminated, of which more than 20% exceeded permissible levels. Our water is known to have high levels of contaminants. For more than 20 years, Bhopalis have cried themselves hoarse that they are being forced to consume water laced with poisons leaching from Union Carbide's now-defunct pesticide factory. In 1996, a study conducted after a diarrhoeal outbreak in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, found coliform bacteria (an indication of faecal contamination) in every sample of well and borewell water tested.
I could go on about the different things that are contaminated that we consume routinely. It is important that we - not just the government, but people and media -- address these issues and give them the importance they deserve. Otherwise, all those allegations that the ongoing noise around soft drinks is just political static would be justified.
The source of contamination - be it for Pepsi Cola or breast milk - is the same. The ministry of health's lukewarm response to the whole cola controversy is nothing to wonder about. Who put the DDT in the breast milk? The world over, DDT has been phased out precisely because of these concerns. But India has filed for an exemption from an international requirement to phase it out under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. India's claim is that DDT is integral to the country's malaria control programme. Government goes about slashing health spending while improved public health engineering, health extension and early diagnostic services can decrease the number of malaria casualties. The way to regulate DDT levels in breast milk is not by banning breast milk or restricting its use. It is a known fact in Western countries that levels of this chemical in human tissues have steadily fallen since they were banned in the 1970s. The writing on the wall is clear: DDT has to be phased out.
Ditto for chemicals like lindane and chlorpyriphos. Chlorpyriphos is one of the most common insecticides in use in the US. It is also omnipresent, contaminating groundwater sources and human bodies alike. Not only that, chlorpyriphos comes from notorious parentage: Union Carbide's parent Dow Chemical is the single largest manufacturer of chlorpyriphos in the world. After overwhelming evidence was presented linking chlorpyriphos exposure in domestic settings to mental deficiencies in children, Dow Chemical was forced to withdraw the chemical from domestic use in the United States. Around the same time, Dow began marketing the chemical in India to domestic consumers with Pepsi-style claims that it was safe. Of course, there are numerous other players supplying this chemical. That explains its ubiquitous presence in the Indian environment.
While it is possible for Coca Cola, perhaps even municipal corporations to purify the water, ridding water of chemical contamination adds substantially to the cost of water. And then, what about those (usually rural people and the urban poor) who are outside the network of institutionalized or regulated service providers?
The Nation's agricultural policy, and materials use policy has a lot of bearing on what contamination we are exposed to. In this whole Cola debate, the pesticide industry which goes about suing activists at the drop of a hat is noticeably silent. It knows that all fingers ultimately point to this industry. No matter how careful I am in using chlorpyriphos or malathion or DDT or Lindane, I cannot prevent these pesticides from entering the environment and contaminating the food I eat, the water I drink and my very body.
Unfortunately, chemicals are approved subject to industry pressure rather than based on sound science. Industry has far deeper access to government policymaking than people or people's organisations, even local governments do. Despite the massive body of evidence against endosulfan after the Kasargode cashew plantation controversy, the Central Insecticides Board kept the pesticide industry happy by refusing to withdraw the chemical.
The story is the same with other industrial sectors too. Virtually every unsustainable material has an industry propping it. Public health, our policymakers say, has to be weighed against the health of these industries.
In 2000, a study of breast milk taken from residents living near garbage dumps in Laos, India and Philippines found high levels of dioxins in the samples taken. Dioxins are the most toxic chemical known to science. They can be released during the manufacture and disposal of chlorinated material like PVC plastics or many pesticides. Unless we begin thinking right now about replacing such unsustainable material with environmentally friendly and safe material, we'll be stuck with a dangerous body burden and no time to change. If a material or product can't be produced, used or disposed of safely, phase the damn thing out. With material like PVC, mercury and pesticides, committed time-bound phase outs are far less socially disruptive than bans.
I was surprised to hear the CSE spokesperson on NDTV speak of a poison-nutrition trade-off, suggesting that chemical-free food is not possible. To its credit, CSE has not done studies merely on pesticide residues in soft drinks. Their studies on pesticides in various environmental media are well-known. But if as with soft drinks, their stance on pesticides in vegetables is one of enforcing residue levels at retailers' end or at the point of consumption, the entire exercise becomes futile.
Our claims of scientific advancement are nonsense if we are not able to draw on our centuries-old wisdom about what to grow where and when and how to ensure that our food supplies, our mothers' milk and our water are safe and bereft of poison. To say that chemical-free food is not possible is to say that healthy babies and a clean environment are not economically viable.
(Nityanand Jayaraman is an independent journalist and researcher focussing on investigating corporate abuses of the environment and human rights. He is based in Chennai, and is associated with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal)
InfoChange News & Features, August 2006
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