SPHLA: A success story

Every scientist of the State Public Health Laboratory, Assam (SPHLA), commonly called as Food Safety Laboratory, can now hold his/her head high for being competent enough to carry out laboratory tests of any standard. Now the badges they wear tell one their and the laboratory’s competency in carrying out analysis as per international standards. It was on January 16, 2020 the laboratory (SPHLA) got accreditation from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories. SPHLA is the sixth of its kind in the country to have got such a prestigious recognition.

It took long 120 years for SPHLA to script this success story. The journey in the difficult terrains in the Northeast India has always been a real roller coaster, so is the 120-year-old journey of SPHLA towards excellence. Set up by British India in 1920 in Shillong, SPHLA has since been testing food items to ascertain their safety standards in the region. In 1973, the laboratory was shifted to the Gauhati Medical College & Hospital (GMCH) from where it was shifted to Bamunimaidam in the metropolitan city, its present location. The area of operation of the laboratory is quite vast. Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim entirely depend on it for maintaining their food safety standards. This is not all. Departments like Customs, NF Railway etc also depend on this laboratory. It’s the Rs 10 crore which the Food Safety Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) pumped in for upgrading SPHLA that has made all the difference. Three highly sophisticated machines – LC-MS-MS (Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry), GS-MS-MS (Gas Chromatography Triple Quadropole Mass Spectrometry) and ICP-MS Inductivity Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry – from Germany and the USA have been installed in the laboratory. Credit goes to FSSAI also for pumping in such a huge amount for the laboratory. With the induction of such machines the Laboratory has been able to analyse many more parameters like pesticide residue, metal contaminants, veterinary drugs residues etc that were not possible earlier. Yet another virtue is that the Laboratory now has one more food safety van (food safety on wheels) besides the existing one. According to the WHO (World Health Organization), pesticides— which are used in agriculture to protect crops against insects, fungi, weeds and other pests and to protect public health in controlling the vectors of tropical diseases, such as mosquitoes – are also potentially toxic to humans. They may induce adverse health effects including cancer, effects on reproduction, immune or nervous systems. Before they can be authorized for use, pesticides should be tested for all possible health effects and the results should be analysed by experts to assess any risks to humans. Likewise, in recent decades, adverse effects of unexpected contaminants on crop quality have also threatened both food security and human health. Heavy metals and metalloids can disturb human metabolomics, contributing to morbidity and even mortality.

The problem now is the workload on this understaffed laboratory that has to test food and other materials of five states, besides central government’s agencies that have establishments in the Northeast. Laboratory tests for maintaining food safety of international standards are a huge task, especially in getting the samples tested on time. The situation can be eased through the setting up of branches of the laboratory in all the states in the Northeast, at least for all general tests barring a few critical ones for which one will have to send the samples to Guwahati. Will the authority concerned rise to the occasion? Food safety is an aspect which is always worth spending money on.