A note from a friend"s friend:
I recently made a trip to Thailand and discovered that the
locals do not eat or touch longan and lychees, which are common and
popular Thai fruit. The reason is that they are afraid of cancer.
They found out that the Taiwanese investors came and bought the
Thai fruit farm up north and uses gun powder as fertilizer for
these fruit trees. Eventually, these fruit trees will die but
give out a lot of fruits prior to their deaths. These fruits could
be ignited after picking, and people who were picking and
packing them have problems with their hands.
Then, these investors mostly exported the fruits to foreign country such as
America. I have a cousin in Northern Thailand who is in the fruit farm
business,
and she said she would not eat them unless she knows which farms
they are grown from. The Thai government is trying to catch these
investors. In the mean time, we should try not to eat longan and
lychees, not canned, not fresh, not frozen. These fruits are
mostly imported from Thailand anyway. I also noticed that these
fruits are cheaper and bigger in size now in the Chinese market,
but I would not eat them if I were you!