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Continued on page 13 – Pesticides in the Food Chainthe UK government only tests foodstuffs for amaximum of 150 pesticides, often it’s a lot fewer.We also have one of the lowest rates of residue testingin the whole of Europe in terms of number of samplesper head of population. The Danish government testsfive times as many food samples per person in theirpopulation than we do so maybe it’s not surprising thatthey find a higher percentage of Danish food iscontaminated. The UK government only looks at aselected number of foods each year, so we don’t haveyear on year data for most foods to show whetherresidue trends are going up or down.The exceptions are bread, milk and potatoes which aretested every year, but, again, we don’t sample enough toget an idea of how much pesticide we consume even onthese daily staples.(c) What happens when we eat food with a mixtureof different residues?We really have no idea of how the cocktail of differentpesticides consumed in our diet interact once inside thebody. Scientists do know that the potency of the mixtureof some toxic chemicals can be very much higher thanjust adding up the effect of the individual compoundsthemselves- this is particularly worrying for the groupof pesticides that act in similar ways on the nervoussystem. The US system now takes this into accountwhen setting safety levels but we’re lagging behind inEurope. Pesticide mixtures can also cause some nastysurprises- scientists discovered that neither theweedkiller paraquat nor the fungicide maneb alone hadany effect on the brain function of mice in thelaboratory. But when they put them together, they sawdamage similar to the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.These kind of interactions are not considered at all ingovernment safety assessments and there is no limit setfor total daily intake of pesticides from all food sources.(d) As long as residues are below the legal limit,there’s no problem?The authorities always stress that the vast majority offood sampled does not exceed the legal limits forparticular pesticides in particular foodstuffs (these arecalled maximum residue levels). This means thatgovernment considers it acceptable to consume verysmall doses of pesticides every day as part of a dailydiet. The government also reassures us that thesemaximum residue levels are way below establishedsafety limits but this is not always true. We’ve looked atthe data and found that for 26 different pesticides whichmay be sprayed on apples, a toddler eating an applecontaining a residue at the legal limit would exceed thegovernment’s own level of what is considered “safe” to eatin one day’s intake of apples.Across Europe, governments do aim to re-assess currentlegal limits to make sure there is no chance of eating morethan the daily safety limit but the process is painfully slow.In the meantime, we are exposed to a daily cocktail ofdozens of different pesticides in our food, many of whichare known to cause long-term damage to different systemsof the human body. Nobody has any real idea of how muchpesticide the average British school child, for example, isconsuming every day in their food and drink, or how thisdose of poison might affect children’s development. Andwe don’t consider whether they might also be exposed topesticides applied at school, at home or in public places,all adding to the build up of toxic contamination. It’s timeto look much more closely at our daily diet of pesticidesand to demand action from our government and food andfarming companies to take these hidden ingredients out ofthe menu!References for this textDDT fact sheet. Pesticides News no.40, June 1998, p18-20Chlorpyrifos fact sheet, Pesticides News no.41, September 1998,p18-19The Pesticide Hazard: A global health and environmental audit .Barbara Dinham, PAN UK, 1993Chlorpyrifos faces severe restriction. Wayne Brittenden,Pesticides News No.49, September 2000, p16EA Traces Source of Ouse Fish Deaths, Report No 181,Environment Agency for England and Wales, 21 August 2001Hundreds of hazardous pesticides are still approved in Europe.C Wattiez and F Veillerette. Pesticides News No. 65, September2004, page 11Pesticides in food- what’s the problem? Briefing no. 3, PANEurope, London. September 2004Pesticides in your food. PAN UK http://www.panuk.org/poster.htmUK government tomato residue results. In; Pesticide residuemonitoring. Second quarter results April-June 2004, brand nameannex.http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/prc.asp?id=998Pesticides in the diet of infants and children. National ResearchCouncil, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1993.Have we lost our heads ? Neurotoxic residues harmful to thedeveloping brain of our children, Luijk R. and S. Schalk(Consumentenbond) and H. Muilerman (Stichting Natuur enMilieu), Utrecht, Netherlands, 2000.14-- Traditional African Clinic July 2013Monitoring of Pesticide Residues in Products of Plant Origin inthe European Union, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtensten. 2002Report. SANCO/17/04 final, Health & Consumer ProtectionDirectorate General, European Commission, 2004.Continued on page 15
Continued frm page 14 - Pesticides in the Food Chainhttp://europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/inspections/fnaoi/reports/annual_eu/index_en.htmlPesticides in children's food. Environmental Working Group,Washington, 1993.Rachel’s Environment & Health News #821-- EnvironmentalToxic ants and Developmental Disabilities, July 07, 2005http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=3Rachel’s Environment & Health News #810-811 -- HumanExposure and Health Hazards, Part 1 & 2, February 03,2005Modeling the dietary pesticides exposures of young children.Pennycook, FR et al., International Journal Occupational &Environmental Health 10 304-309, 2004.Hot on Parkinson’s trail. Scientists have amassed evidencethat long-term exposure to toxic compounds, especiallypesticides, can trigger the neurological disease. Marla Cone,The Los Angeles Times 27 November 2005http://www.panuk.org/archive/Projects/Food/Pesticide%20issues%20in%20the%20food%20chain.pdf☻☻☻☻☻☻Scientists link Pesticides &Biodiversity LossBy GroundTruthJuly 1, 2013Many scientists rank biodiversity loss very high on theirlist of urgent global concerns. Chemical contaminantshave long been understood as an important driver, butempirical evidence on a large scale has been sparse.A new study published in the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences provides compelling datato fill this gap. Researchers found that biodiversitydropped in pesticide-laden streams in three countries:Germany, France and Australia.The study examines biological diversity data at both thespecies and taxonomic family level, and groups thestream sites into three “contamination categories”according to pesticide levels found through monitoring.Both family and species biodiversity decreasedsignificantly with increased pesticide contamination.Biodiversity loss in perspectiveFive great extinction events have reshaped earth in thepast 439 million years, each wiping out between halfand 95% of planetary life. The most recent was thekilling off of dinosaurs. Today, scientists tell us, we'reliving through a sixth great cataclysm.Seven in ten biologists believe that today's trajectorytoward mass extinction poses an even greater threat tohumanity than the global warming which contributes to it.So the value of studies identifying drivers of the trendcannot be overstated.This most recent research used a “species-at-risk” indicatorin the analysis, tagging species that previous studies haveidentified as particularly susceptible to pesticides. Astoxicity increased, so did the proportion of the sensitivespecies adversely impacted, in both Europe and Australia.Sites were screened for other environmental factors thatmight affect species diversity, and a second line of analysiswas used to determine whether other water quality factorscould be adversely affecting biodiversity.The researchers found no consistent link to other indicators,leaving pesticide contamination as the main driver ofbiodiversity loss.Prioritizing action on pesticidesThe authors called for more protective standards — and formore ecotoxicology investigations to cover large-scalepesticide applications, as these are most relevant to policyand real-world impacts.“The measurement of the environmental concentrations ofpesticides is difficult and expensive due to their episodicand low-level exposure and the multitude of substances.Therefore, the actual effects of pesticides can easily bemisattributed to other... drivers... which are betterunderstood and can be more easily investigated.”We know that pesticide drift and residues on our food aremajor routes of exposure that pose potential harms tohuman health. The fact that pesticides are bad for otherorganisms comes as no surprise.The question is, just how much evidence do we needlinking pesticides to broad ecological harms before webegin the wholesale shift to safer alternatives?http://www.panna.org/blog/scientists-link-pesticides-biodiversityloss☻☻☻☻☻☻News Releases fromHeadquarters (EPA)Release Date: May 28, 2013Wal-Mart Pleads Guilty To Federal Environmental CrimesAnd Civil Violations And Will Pay More Than $81 Million /Retailer admits violating criminal and civil laws designedto protect water quality and to ensure proper handling ofhazardous wastes and pesticidesContinued on page 1615-- Traditional African Clinic July 2013
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