Huaihua City, Hunan Province is one of the main producing areas of disposable chopsticks. There are more than 40 disposable chopsticks factories, large and small, with an annual output of over 1 100 million pairs. In a chopstick factory in Xiaojia Town, Huitong County, the reporter saw the whole production process of disposable chopsticks.
Chemical raw materials are constantly pleasantly surprised in the manufacturing process.
Workers cut the bamboo into sections first, then beat it into blanks with machines, and then put it into a curing barn to dry. The dried chopstick blank is covered tightly with a layer of cloth, and white smoke emerges from time to time under it, giving off a pungent smell. Workers in this factory told us that they were fumigating chopsticks with sulfur to make them whiter and prevent mildew. The reporter found that the sulfur they used is industrial sulfur and belongs to chemical raw materials. Sulfur dioxide residue will be produced during fumigation, and the process of smoking chopsticks takes two days.
After being smoked with sulfur, chopsticks are formed by cutting blanks. In order to make chopsticks feel smoother, they must be polished. The reporter saw that there were not only chopsticks in the polishing machine, but also pieces of white things. The worker told us that it was paraffin. Paraffin wax contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is a low-end product in the process of petroleum smelting. In this way, chopsticks are polished with paraffin wax and put into bags filled with chemical fertilizers, waiting for delivery.
Moldy chopsticks are cooked before they are sold.
During the investigation, the reporter also found a strange phenomenon. Some moldy black chopsticks have not been thrown away and need further processing. In Xichong Village, Huaihua, Hunan Province, the reporter saw a scene in which black chopsticks were boiled white. And the boss told us that the bleach they used was hydrogen peroxide, and 40 kilograms were poured into a pot.
The reporter learned that it has become an open secret in the industry that moldy chopsticks are cooked with industrial hydrogen peroxide and then sold. After these chemical raw materials are processed, disposable chopsticks will produce a variety of chemical residues, and long-term intake of these chemical residues will cause harm to human health. However, the reporter visited more than 30 chopsticks factories in Huaihua, Hunan and Yifeng, Jiangxi, and no one disinfected chopsticks everywhere.
Disposable chopsticks have residues exceeding the standard.
As early as 2005, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and the National Standards Committee jointly issued the national standard for disposable chopsticks. In the use of food additives, only sulfur dioxide is allowed to have a certain residue, and the specific residue is strictly limited, but this standard has long been forgotten by these manufacturers. Even the manufacturers themselves admit that "most of the disposable chopsticks now have excessive residues", and such "sanitary chopsticks are actually very unsanitary".
Chopsticks have thus changed from a manufacturer to a wholesaler. Some of them are packaged and sold all over the country, and finally enter small and medium-sized restaurants, while others are sold to some processing factories for disposable tableware. In Huaihua, Hunan, the reporter met Ma Liansen, a wholesaler who supplies tableware processing factory. According to him, Jililai, Qiuqiu, Tepp and other tableware brands are all using his chopsticks, and they are disinfected by the tableware factory after entering the tableware factory.
In this way, disposable chopsticks that have not been disinfected by anyone finally appeared in front of us as sterilized tableware.
Disposable chopsticks also have a shelf life
The Detailed Rules for the Implementation of Food Packaging Container Tools clearly stipulates that sterile disposable tableware can only be guaranteed for up to 4 months. Why should the shelf life of disposable chopsticks be stipulated? That's because the wood or bamboo of disposable chopsticks contains a certain amount of water, which is easy to get moldy over time. Especially in the rainy season in summer and autumn or in the humid environment in the south, mildew is easy to occur. If consumers use these expired and moldy disposable chopsticks, it is equivalent to eating "aflatoxin".
Extremely environmentally unfriendly "disposable goods"
More and more disposable articles bring convenience to people's lives. But from the point of view of environmental protection, behind this convenience is the waste of a lot of resources and the accumulation of garbage, which brings endless future troubles. According to the survey, there are thousands of enterprises producing wooden chopsticks in China at present, which consume nearly 5 million cubic meters of wood resources every year. China cuts down about 47.58 million cubic meters of trees every year, and these chopsticks account for 65.438+00.5%. In the process of producing chopsticks, the effective utilization rate of wood is 60%, from logs to blocks to finished products.
The raw materials used in regular disposable chopsticks are all wood with good texture and do not need special processing. However, in order to reduce costs, many small workshops use inferior wood, which looks "black". This not-so-beautiful color can't be favored by consumers. Therefore, disposable chopsticks processed by small workshop producers will soon "transform" and board people's tables angrily.
Investigation of production methods
Solid state is made by sulfur fumigation and bleaching. The sulfur dioxide of chopsticks bleached with sulfur gas will seriously exceed the standard. Therefore, when people eat with these chopsticks, sulfur dioxide can easily solidify into the respiratory tract and cough with the flow of air. Respiratory diseases such as asthma will also follow. In addition, sulfur contains heavy metals, such as mercury/lead, which can accumulate in human body, and long-term accumulation will cause mercury poisoning. The method of liquid processing chopsticks is to bleach with chlorine or hydrogen peroxide, especially chlorine, which may contain dioxins that once made people talk about color change.
As for bamboo chopsticks, in order to remove the raw edges of chopsticks and make them look smooth and white, producers put chopsticks in talcum powder and process them by friction. Although disposable chopsticks produced by informal manufacturers are very harmful, so far, there is no special hygienic inspection standard for disposable chopsticks in China.