Children in harm's way

Children in harm's way


Posted 00:06am (Mla time) Mar 16, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE DEPARTMENT of Health says it was pesticide contamination of cassava snacks sold to students in Mabini, Bohol. The National Bureau of Investigation disagrees (as usual), saying it was cyanide from cassava flour. Whatever the cause, with 28 children dead and more than 70 others hospitalized, the food poisoning raises a host of questions related to the safety and health of our children, whether in rural or urban areas.

Three issues came to my mind as I followed the Bohol tragedy: (a) food safety in schools; (b) the pesticides problem; and (c) basic survival skills for the Filipino.

Food safety

I am certain there are daily outbreaks of food poisoning among our students, mostly going undetected. These are usually mild diarrhea cases from unsanitary food handling, but occasionally you'll have more serious cases that are picked up by the papers, such as this recent case in Bohol.

Our students get their food either from canteens on campus or from the numerous food vendors and establishments around schools. The registered businesses are a bit safer because they have to be inspected. But I say only "a bit" more safe. Inspections by government regulatory agencies are rare, and center on basic sanitation, such as employees being told to use hairnets or to wash their hands before and after using the toilet. After the inspection, it's often back to old dirty routines.

If basic sanitary measures were not observed, I'd worry even more about other food safety issues. It's hard to say if even owners of larger restaurants or canteens are aware of how long foods can be kept safely -- eggs, for example, are notorious for breeding salmonella bacteria, even in the refrigerator.

Then we get to the food vendors, who are completely unregulated. To some extent they may actually be safer because they only prepare small amounts of food, which are usually sold out or consumed the same day they are prepared. But we also see the potential for mass poisoning, as in the cassava cakes sold in Bohol.

Should we now require all food vendors to register themselves? That would only drive up prices of their food products, often the only affordable items for poorer students.

We'd probably get more results if the Department of Education and the DOH could just join forces and conduct workshops for anyone involved in food for students -- from administrators to food handlers to the vendors themselves, instructing them not just on hand washing but on safety around cooking and storage.

And while they're at it, they should be giving basic nutrition education as well. Our canteens, restaurants and ambulant food vendors -- even in, or should I say especially in the most exclusive of schools -- tend to sell foods with dubious nutritional quality, from instant noodles to soft drinks. In a way we're seeing a kind of creeping poisoning here, a warping of Filipino food habits happening, ironically, in our educational establishments.

Pesticides

I can believe DOH officials when they say it was pesticides that killed the children in Bohol. They found pesticides in one of the vendors' homes and theorize that there may have been contamination as she prepared the cassava cakes. Another theory here is that the schoolchildren were already being exposed to pesticides used in the fields and that the cassava, no matter how small the amounts of contaminating chemicals, had enough of a "trigger dose" to cause serious, if not fatal, poisoning.

I hope the DOH follows up on these leads to trace the trail of poison, and use this to warn a complacent public about this ongoing ecological disaster, so terribly lethal because it is so quiet. The pesticides, easily absorbed through the skin, are all around us now, finding their way into the blood of our schoolchildren and into the breast milk of mothers.

Environmental activists have been warning about pesticides for years, including the way Filipinos have become so cavalier about these poisons. Filipinos, especially farmers, often refer to pesticides as "gamot" [medicine] so it shouldn't be surprising they're now kept inside the home, sometimes even in the kitchen next to food items (one time I even saw a pesticide stored next to a can of infant formula).

We associate pesticides with rural areas, but the insecticides in urban homes utilize the same powerful chemicals for an arsenal of products to deal with creatures that fly, crawl or creep: mosquitoes, ants, cockroaches, fleas.

Check how you store and use these chemicals. Do you keep them next to food? Are the insecticides within the reach of children? Do you ask your children to do the spraying? Do you spray the rooms where infants and toddlers sleep and play? Do you forget to wash your hands after using these chemicals? If you answered yes to all those, you're taking the risks of these insecticides too lightly, especially in relation to children.

We need to educate both children and adults, about these pesticides. And it's time we moved away from calling pesticides "gamot" and use "lason" [poison] instead, with stricter regulations on warning on the labels about storage and use.

Survival 101

When you think about it, what we need are basic Survival 101 skills for a transition society. On one hand, we now live with the risks coming with modernity's many convenience products, from junk foods to insecticides and pesticides. On the other hand, we're rapidly losing traditional knowledge and skills from the past that could be useful for survival, including how to deal with some of modernity's problems.

In the context of many rural areas, there's the need to be able to distinguish wild and domesticated cassava, the wild ones having much higher levels of cyanide. Traditionally, even wild cassava was used for food but people knew how to process the root crops to remove the precursors of cyanide. We've apparently lost that skill, resulting in periodic poisoning outbreaks when people consume the wild cassava.

The Bohol poisoning reminds us it's not just knowledge about cassava that we need to revive. We need to reexamine many of our traditions around food, promoting the healthier aspects so we can wean ourselves away from instant noodles and junk foods. I've written, in an earlier column, about the possibilities of giving income-generating loans to food vendors on condition that they prepare nutritious foods. There's a whole array of traditional nutritious snack items -- including cassava cakes -- that can be encouraged.

Similarly, as we look into the angle of pesticide poisoning, we should be looking for safer alternatives, including traditional plant-based and non-chemical methods for controlling insects.

All this information and skills should be taught in our schools, making sure that the next generation of Filipino parents can better protect themselves, and their children.