Lychee Deaths Were Caused Not By The Fruit But By Banned Pesticide Endosulfan, Says New Study

It is no lychee but Endosulfam, a pesticide banned internationally, which could have caused deaths of young children in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, a new study has found.

In June 2014, 122 children in Muzaffarpur region died after their brain swelled, which resembled symptoms of acute encephalitis.

The report published earlier this year in The Lancet report blamed the annual outbreak on lychees, which when consumed on empty stomach by malnourished children could lead to extremely low blood-sugar levels, causing seizure and death. The report said lychees contain toxins that inhibit the body's ability to produce glucose, which affected young children whose blood sugar levels were already low because they were not eating dinner.

The new report published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, found that a number of pesticides — including endosulfan — were being used.

The researchers learned that children living near the orchard frequently ate unwashed fruit that fell to the ground, and peeled away the lychees' rough-textured red skin with their teeth.



The study was not able to definitively show that each case was caused by pesticides, or identify which pesticides were responsible for the young victims' brain inflammation.

Spraying of endosulfan on cashew plantations in Kerala’s Kasaragod district had caused a generation to be born with physical deformation like congenital disabilities, hydrocephalus, diseases of the nervous system, epilepsy, cerebral palsy. The pesticide was sprayed from helicopters over the cashew crop, which fell on plants and crops, and leached into water, affecting people that consumed it.

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