Fact Check: Did World Health Organization ranked Sri Lanka at the top recently for excessive fertilizer usage in South Asian Region..?

Excessive amount fertilizers used in agriculture has been a matter of concern and topic of debate in Sri Lanka since past couple of tears. We noticed that on social media, these discussions have sprung once again. The reason for this is that many posts claiming Sri Lanka has been ranked no. 1 in the world in consumption of poisonous food. Below is one such post, the caption of the post reads as follows: “ලොව වස විස අධිකම ආහාර ගන්න රටවලින් ලංකාවට අංක 01” English translation “Sri Lanka Ranked World No.1 among poisonous food consumption”. A newspaper clipping from Dinamina newspaper is seen along with this claim.

FB Post

Archived Link

Facebook keyword search yielded a number of similar claims from 2019 as well. Thus, these claims tend to resurface repeatedly every year at different point of time.

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Archived Link

Fact Check

The viral image gives reference to an article published in the state-run Sinhala daily newspaper “Dinamina” (දිනමිණ). From the first glance at its logo, doubts are raised as the logo in the clipping is different than the current logo of the newspaper.

When searched about the claim on Google, it yielded the following results. We found that the newspaper clipping was published on 9^th December 2013.

The exact details of the post could be found on the online and Epaper versions of Dinamina newspaper as below

Web Version | Epaper | Archived Link

We noticed a research published by Sunil J Wimalawansa on May 2014 titled “Impact of changing agricultural practices on human health: Chronic kidney disease of multi-factorial origin in Sri Lanka” which had quoted the same data which had initially been published by World Bank in 2013 .

Therefore we checked for World Bank latest stats for South Asian region fertilizer usage. The latest published stats were from 2016 and we noticed that in terms of Sri Lanka’s Fertilizer consumption (kilograms per hectare of arable land) was much less compared to countries like Bangladesh, Maldives in the South Asian Region.

World Bank Data (2016) | Archived Link | Indexmundi.com

Conclusion :

From our investigation, it is evident the recuring claims about Sri Lanka ranked no.1 among South Asian countries for poisonous food consumption is misleading and based on the findings which were published in 2013.

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