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Agricultural products produced in Central Greece, Eastern Macedonia - Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus and Crete are completely safe for consumption, announces the authority for food control in Greece.

Two days ago, farmers from Thebes gave out free vegetables in the centre of Athens in order to prove to consumers that their products are safe for human health. The authority explained that stringent checks for the presence of heavy metals in agricultural products were carried out in 2011. The controlling service tested vegetables such as carrots, potatoes and onions for the presence of lead, cadmium, nickel and chromium.

The results showed that levels of lead and cadmium are fully consistent with the highest values described in the Greek and European legislation.

Although no highest values for the other two metals - nickel and chromium, have been set, the content measured is different, but in no way is it a threat to consumer health.

At the same time, according to the Minister of Environment George Papakonstantinou, the plants located in the region of Thebes do not comply with set standards for discharging wastewater into the Asopos River. To date, only 30% of industrial sites comply with the restrictions, and this despite the fact that they had all been obliged to adapt to the requirements for environmental protection by the end of 2011.

The Minister pointed out again that the institution is considering the option of opening a central station to purify industrial waters and for the factories that cause pollution to cover most of the cost of its operation.

Meanwhile, the Ministry is discussing the possibility of processing the polluted waters in the treatment plant of the national water company in the Athens suburb of Metamorfosi. For this purpose, the water will be carried out in tanks and the capacity of the plant is 600 tanks a day.

As for the river Pinios in Thessaly, George Papakonstantinou said that 59% of the 64 streams that are collected in its bed are in poor ecological condition and 20% in bad ecological condition.

As for Pinios, which is located between the constructed dam in Girtoni and Larissa, it is in poor ecological condition and 8% of catchment waters are of unknown water composition. However, the discussion of the first plan of the programme of taking measures for Pinios River will begin at the end of February.