Lack of government policies on food and water safety is causing the death of 2.2 million people, including children, every year across the globe, health experts said on Sunday.
They said the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the past 50 years has grown nearly 170 times.
As a consequence, persistent residues of the chemicals contaminate food and disperse in the environment and find their way into the food chain.
“There has been rampant use of chemicals resulting in several short-term and long-term effects on the human body. High use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides while growing food grains results in food-borne diseases,” Behram Pardiwalla, consultant internal medicine at Wockhardt hospital, said in a statement.
He said tackling the problem was necessary because toxic compounds like pesticides, heavy metals and toxins of fungal or bacterial origin could also contaminate the food during manufacture, storage or transportation.