Environmentalist cautions against roadside drying of foodstuffs

Vice President, North Central Zone of EHOAN, Mr Solomon Anyegwu, who disclosed this in Lokoja while speaking with journalists decried the practice and attributed it to ignorance.
 According to him, diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery, polio, gastroenteritis and other fecal-related diseases could manifest from the practice of drying foodstuffs like corn, pepper, cassava among others on roadsides, adding that the effect of the practice could be viewed from three perspectives including medical, cultural and economic.
 Open-air defecation, according to the environmentalist, is still rampant among rural dwellers, saying that rain run-off often convey the debris of human faeces and animal dung to the gutters where they are deposited only to contaminate such foodstuffs on roadsides.
 Anyegwu said that not all bacteria could be destroyed through extreme heat as some could develop “cysts” that can withstand high temperature from cooking only to pose health challenges in the human system.
 “Evidence abound that some germs remain stubborn at the level of cooking and they remain very strong and can dangerously attack and collapse the body immunities on ingestion and make the system susceptible to diseases. Economically,  foodstuffs being dried by roadsides attract domestic animals to the roads where they could stray into the roads and cause accidents leading to loss of human lives apart from themselves being killed,” he said.
 He however called on health officers and all stakeholders to rise to the challenge by visiting the rural communities to discourage the habit through enlightenment and where necessary, make arrests to discourage the practice.