Government promises to rid the nation’s food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren’t doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.
The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.
When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found. “The transformation is extremely rapid,” said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
“Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets,” said Lu, a professor at Emory University’s School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.
Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.
The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.
The community has double the median national income, but the wealth of Mercer Island made no difference in the outcome, he said.
“We are confident that if we did the same study in poor communities, we would get the same results,” he said. The study is being repeated in Georgia.
The study has not yet linked the pesticide levels to specific foods, but other studies have shown peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, nectarines, strawberries and cherries are among those that most frequently have detectable levels of pesticides.
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For a eye opening review of the FDA check-out this GAO report that was completed Jan. 29, 2007 many recommendations, none of which may surprise you. One fact was made very clear reading these pieces food safety is NOT a priority at all.
