Pan masala contains areca nuts, a potential cancer causing agent.
Highlights
- Encourage husbands not to promote pan masala: Delhi govt to actors' wives
- Letters sent to wives of Shah Rukh Khan,Ajay Devgan,Arbaaz Khan & Govinda
- Delhi govt earlier wrote to all 4 actors but failed to get any response
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on Monday urged four Bollywood actors to refrain from endorsing pan masala (tobacco) products as these contain areca nuts, a potential cancer causing agent.
The request was made in letters to the wives of actors Ajay Devgn, Shah Rukh Khan, Arbaaz Khan and Govinda as they did not respond to the earlier requests by the Delhi health department.
"It is an humble appeal to you for encouraging Shah Rukh Khan not to participate in advertisements of pan masala in larger public health interest," said a letter written to Shah Rukh Khan's wife Gauri Khan.
"Earlier a letter was written to Shah Rukh Khan urging him not to participate in such advertisements in public interest. Nonetheless we (Delhi government) have not received any response till date nor he has plugged doing such advertisements," the letter said.
The Delhi government wrote similar letters to Ajay Devgan's wife Kajol, Arbaaz Khan's wife Malaika Arora Khan and Govinda's wife Sunita Ahuja.
The letter said that even if these pan masalas do not contain tobacco or nicotine, they surely contain areca nuts (supari) and now there is scientific evidence to prove that supari causes cancer.
Earlier, a similar letter was written to actress Sunny Leone, over her role in advertisements endorsing tobacco products and pan masala.