Kidney disease causing CIC fertilizer consignment!

Oct 25, 2015

The CIC company, which imports and distributes agro-chemicals, has imported a consignment of fertilizer containing a banned heavy metal in breach of regulations pertaining to the importation of chemical fertilizer.

This consignment has a very high content of cadmium, the Sri Lanka Standards Institution has found.

According to international quality regulations, the cadmium content should not exceed five per cent, and CIC claimed the content to be 2 pc.

However, after it became known that the fertilizer contained 23.7 pc of cadmium, authorities seized the consignment.

The WHO says cadmium is a key contributor to kidney disease, and that it enters human body through the use of substandard chemical fertilizer. Therefore, the WHO has had to issue international quality certificates for the use of chemical fertilizer from time to time.

The Fertilizer Secretariat is the institution which deals with the quality of imported fertilizer here.

Several attempts to contact the Fertilizer Secretariat were unsuccessful.

However, the agriculture minister appointed a committee on October 23 to investigate this fertilizer consignment.