The IFT (Institute of Food Technology) posted this article. Finally someone agrees with me. Stop buying into market and just buy fruits and vegetables. Whatever the outside fruit and vegetable stand on my corner has, I buy. It is cheap and full of nutrients.
The researchers analyzed USDA Pesticide Data Program (PDP) results to identify the 10 most frequently detected pesticides on each of the 12 foods. Then, the probabilistic modeling method was used to determine the mean exposure of each pesticide for each food. The researchers compared this mean exposure estimate to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chronic reference dose, which is the estimated amount of a chemical that a person could be exposed to on a daily basis throughout the person’s lifetime without causing harm.
Winter and Katz found that the EPA’s reference doses for each of the pesticides exceeded the mean exposure estimates in all cases. In addition, the reference doses were more than 1,000 times higher than the exposure estimates in more than 90% of the comparisons.
“Such findings suggest that the potential consumer risks from exposure to the most frequently detected pesticides on the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of foods are negligible and cast doubts as to how consumers avoiding conventional forms of such produce items are improving their health status,” wrote the authors.
Specifically, the researchers found that blueberries, cherries, and kale had reference doses that were 30,000 times higher than the exposure estimates for all of the 10 most frequently detected pesticides. Therefore, they concluded that these three commodities shouldn’t appear on the “Dirty Dozen” list. In addition, the researchers stressed that organic produce is not pesticide-free produce. In fact, while conventional produce was between 2.9–4.8 times more likely to contain detectable pesticide residues than organic produce, 23% of organic food samples still tested positive for pesticide residues.
Study
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