Over standard pesticide residues lead to quality crisis of Chinese herbal medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine has always been regarded as a treasure of China, and its efficacy has always been amazed by the world Nowadays, the pesticide residues in traditional Chinese medicine exceed the standard, making the medicine that saves people become "the medicine that harms people's lives" Recently, Greenpeace released a survey report that more than 70% of the commonly used Chinese herbal medicines purchased from nine brand pharmacies including Tongrentang, Yunnan Baiyao, Tianshili and Jiuzhitang were detected to contain a variety of pesticide residues China is the birthplace of Chinese herbal medicine, with unique advantages And there are 70% pesticide residues in nine brand pharmacies, not to mention others It can be said that this phenomenon is not a few Nowadays, pesticide residues are strictly controlled from the field to the dining table, but the quality of Chinese herbal medicine has not been checked or controlled This shows that there is a gap in this supervision, which is not surprising The agricultural residue of Chinese herbal medicine exceeds the standard, which not only greatly reduces the efficacy, but also plays a negative role What will the common people take to cure the disease in the future? The government must attach great importance to it The urgent task is to revise the national pharmacopoeia so as not to make life-saving herbs become chronic poisons, and not to let the old concerns grow day by day On the afternoon of the 24th, Greenpeace, an environmental protection organization, held a press conference in Beijing on traditional Chinese Medicine - investigation report on pesticide pollution of traditional Chinese medicine According to the report, from July 2012 to April 2013, Greenpeace purchased 65 commonly used traditional Chinese medicines as test samples in 9 cities including Beijing, Kunming, Hangzhou, Tianjin and Hong Kong and sent them to a qualified independent third-party Laboratory for testing Pesticide residue detection The results showed that 48 of the 65 samples contained pesticide residues, accounting for 70% of the total samples All 32 samples contained 3 or more pesticide residues Among them, nine famous traditional Chinese medicine brand enterprises, including Tongrentang and Yunnan Baiyao, detected six kinds of pesticides forbidden to be used in traditional Chinese medicine materials, including phorate, carbofuran, methamidophos, fipronil, aldicarb and methoxyphos, among 26 samples in total, such as price of Panax notoginseng, price of honeysuckle, price of wolfberry, price of Angelica and price of Atractylodes macrocephala So many poisonous Chinese herbal medicines have made Chinese herbal medicine dusty, which has greatly affected the reputation of Chinese herbal medicine industry Since ancient times, the medical principles of Hua Tuo, Zhang Zhongjing and Bian que have continued to this day, and traditional Chinese medicine conditioning has been welcomed by people People believe that traditional Chinese medicine and eating traditional Chinese medicine will undoubtedly play a positive role in promoting the traditional Chinese medicine industry For thousands of years, traditional Chinese medicine has paid attention to the harmony between human and nature As more and more people agree with this concept, more and more people are watching traditional Chinese medicine At present, more than 160 countries and regions have used traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture It can be said that the global fever of traditional Chinese medicine continues to rise Such a situation should be said to play a positive incentive role in the Chinese medicine market However, the results of this survey undoubtedly hurt people's trust, which can't help worrying about the trust crisis in the traditional Chinese medicine industry We regret to see that not only sulfur price fumigation of traditional Chinese medicine has become a "cancer" hindering the healthy development of traditional Chinese medicine industry, but also highly toxic pesticides as accomplices in the field If the medicine itself is poisoned, it is conceivable that treatment will become a major problem The old disease has not been cured Instead, it has added a new disease of poisoning Do people dare to take traditional Chinese medicine again? According to the principle, even fruits and vegetables are in the implementation of agricultural residue standards, and the Chinese herbal medicines for curing diseases and saving people, of course, should have more stringent testing standards However, the reality is that the detection standard of agricultural residues of traditional Chinese medicine is precisely absent Although the State Food and Drug Administration issued the gap standard to regulate the production quality of traditional Chinese medicine in 2002, the so-called "principles of integrated pest control" and "minimum effective dose" standards are vague, and lack of implementation and evaluation indicators Even if the standards are not set, supervision can be imagined to be a fiction In order to reduce costs and pursue profits, pharmaceutical farmers use a lot of pesticides in the process of traditional Chinese medicine planting, which naturally lacks the minimum constraints Medical experts pointed out that the accumulation of pesticides with low toxicity can damage the male reproductive system and children's nervous system development Taking the residual pesticide with high toxicity may cause vomiting and dizziness, which may be life-threatening at any time People pay more attention to the safety of traditional Chinese medicine because of the lack of standards for traditional Chinese medicine industry in China Many netizens are worried about the quality of traditional Chinese medicine However, South Korea and Japan have developed strict standards and norms for traditional Chinese medicine As a result, high-quality medicinal materials are sent out of the country, but we have to digest those medicinal materials smoked with sulfur price or those with excessive pesticide residues Since the treatment plan of traditional Chinese medicine depends more on the magic effect of traditional Chinese medicine, the quality and safety of traditional Chinese medicine itself are naturally important If the quality of traditional Chinese medicine itself is not effectively guaranteed, or even the side effects are caused by excessive agricultural residues, I'm afraid that it will not only smash the brand of local traditional Chinese medicine, but also affect the whole Chinese traditional medicine to be stigmatized "Good medicine, good medicine", once the quality and safety of the medicine itself can not be guaranteed, I'm afraid that no matter how powerful the publicity is, it's hard to convince consumers In this way, the whole Chinese medicine industry will be damaged What is the reason for the excessive pesticide residues? Miao mingsan, a professor of pharmacology at Henan University of traditional Chinese medicine, told reporters: first, in recent years, the overall land and air pollution is serious, and the enterprises involved have no self inspection of the medicinal materials, and also have great responsibility Second, the prevention and control of diseases and insect pests in the process of traditional Chinese medicine cultivation relies heavily on chemical pesticides Most farmers rely on experience or pesticide shopkeepers' recommendation for drug use, lacking professional guidance and supervision from the government and enterprises Third, the coverage of agricultural residue testing standards is narrow There are 3574 MRLs standards for pesticide residues stipulated by the United Nations, 8669 in the United States, 2289 in the European Union and 9052 in Japan, compared with 484 national and industrial standards in China The problem of overuse of pesticides in the field of traditional Chinese medicine planting is just the tip of the iceberg exposed by the Chinese chemical agriculture model The chemical agriculture model has been extended from fruits and vegetables to traditional Chinese medicine, which is supposed to cure diseases and save people, which makes people very worried In the new edition of China's national pharmacopoeia, there is no content regulation for most of the pesticides, and the drug wholesalers or pharmaceutical companies rarely detect the pesticide residues when they purchase the drugs, so the Chinese herbal medicines rich in pesticide residues are easy to enter the circulation link The media of "problematic traditional Chinese medicine" has reported from time to time that the CCTV economy has exposed that the dealers of traditional Chinese medicine in Longxi County, Gansu Province use industrial sulfur price to fumigate traditional Chinese medicine, so as to achieve the purpose of bleaching, insecticidal and storage resistance Longxi County, Gansu Province, known as "Millennium medicine town" and "Northwest medicine capital", has a production of medicinal materials accounting for more than 20% of the total output of the country, of which the production of the price of Dangshen in Baitiao accounts for more than 70% of the national share Longxi has now become one of the important drug distribution centers in Northwest China Faced with such a huge market, how do local government departments monitor the production of medicinal materials? The answer is inaction The boss of Tang, a Chinese drugstore located in Zhongjie Road, told reporters: "I've been running a Chinese medicine store here for many years, and I know that all the herbs have been fumigated with sulfur price The government doesn't care about it at all The common herbs in the market are basically gone without" beating the sulfur " In recent years, the processing method of sulfur price fumigation has been widely used in the production of traditional Chinese medicine, and many consumers regard appearance as the only standard to judge the quality of traditional Chinese medicine because of the unknown truth Therefore, sulfur price fumigation of traditional Chinese medicine has become a potential rule in the processing industry, and its market share has increased year by year According to the survey, some enterprises and medical institutions that produce Chinese Herbal Pieces actively want to buy Chinese herbal medicines that have not been fumigated by sulfur price even though they raise their prices, but it is difficult to find Chinese herbal medicines that meet the requirements in the market Boss Tang said: as Huaishan, lily price, tremella price, yam and other commonly used materials for soup making here, they should be light yellow under normal conditions You can see that those snow white ones are probably fumigated by sulfur price Behind the prevalence of traditional Chinese medicine sulfonation, it reflects the lack of corresponding standards and effective detection and supervision in China Sulfur dioxide has become the melamine in the field of traditional Chinese medicine, threatening the survival of traditional Chinese medicine, the "quintessence of the country" Some farmers told reporters that they knew that sulfur dioxide would be produced after the medicine was smoked by sulfur price, which is harmful to human body But if we don't smoke the price of sulfur, the color of the medicine is not good and it's not easy to sell If there are insects and mildew, the loss will be very large It costs more than 100 yuan to buy 50 kg of sulfur A bag of 50 kg of sulfur can smoke a ton of medicinal materials The proportion of common medicinal materials in the market is about 50% According to media reports, 13 varieties of Chinese herbal medicine samples were sampled from Qingping Chinese herbal medicine market in Guangzhou The sulfur content of 7 Chinese herbal medicines is more than 500 mg / kg, far higher than the international standard, and the sulfur dioxide content of Dangshen price and Angelica price tablets is more than 1000 mg / kg Zhang Yuan, associate professor of the school of traditional Chinese medicine, Beijing University of traditional Chinese medicine, said: the prices of angelica, Astragalus and Codonopsis, which are smoked by the sulfur price, will damage the digestive tract and respiratory tract mucosa, cause serious damage to liver, kidney and other organs, cause chronic rhinitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, even bronchial asthma, emphysema, and improve the prevalence of lung cancer Long term or large doses may cause poisoning For this reason, the World Health Organization stipulates that the daily intake of sulfur dioxide by human body should be less than 0.7mg/kg According to 50kg body weight of adults, the daily intake should not exceed 35mg However, in the domestic market, the price of sulfur fumigation of traditional Chinese medicine has been in flood In the actual detection, it is found that the sulfur dioxide residue of some traditional Chinese medicine has reached 3000-4000mg / kg In other words, if you take more than 10g of this kind of medicine, it may affect your health In spite of the fact that the drug regulatory departments have sometimes taken actions such as market rectification, the sulfur-containing traditional Chinese medicine is still forbidden, mainly due to the lack of national pharmacopoeia standards In South Korea, the local government revised the maximum limit of sulfur dioxide in 72 kinds of herbal medicines to 30 mg / kg In our country, despite the government's unequivocal opposition to sulfur-containing herbal medicines, there has been a lack of these corresponding standards and effective regulatory procedures, leading to the failure of "sweeping sulfur" This shows that there are three poisons in medicine, even if there is no "sulfation" in medicine, but when some medicine grows in the field, there are many pesticide residues, and the public should not use too much medicine to make soup In view of the situation that Chinese herbal medicines and pesticides exceed the standard, involving a wide range and many links, the treatment should be carried out in accordance with the idea of "department leading, enterprise self-discipline and the whole society participating" Adhere to the linkage of municipal, county and township supervision departments, with the participation of technical supervision departments, and strengthen on-site inspection, technical guidance and supervision sampling By combining the test results with the enterprise credit rating, the enterprises who have been warned for two consecutive times that the pesticide exceeds the standard shall be degraded and the inspection frequency shall be increased Organize the media and the public to participate in the on-site inspection, regularly hold a press conference to report the test results, expose the varieties and enterprises that seriously exceed the standard by their real names, and urge them to implement the off shelf and recall measures to prevent the circulation of toxic traditional Chinese medicine We should go deep into the community and tell the general public about the harmfulness and identification knowledge of sulfur price fumigation of traditional Chinese medicine We should follow the easy to understand requirements and the steps of "one look, two smell, three knead and four taste" to help