A new study published in International Journal of Food Contamination shows that pesticide levels in food are far below levels that would warrant health concern.
The author of the study, Dr. Carl K. Winter of the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of California – Davis, used FDA data on pesticide residue findings collected between 2004 and 2005 on 2,240 food items. A total of 77 pesticides were detected in the samples.
All estimated exposures were well below the chronic reference dose (RfD) – the EPA’s estimate of the maximum amount of a substance that a person could be exposed to daily without risk of harm over a lifetime. As Ross Pomeroy at Real Clear Science notes, “These doses are extremely conservative, often inflated by two orders of magnitude to ensure consumer safety.”
Only three pesticides exceeded 1 percent of the chronic RfD – the insecticides methamidophos (16 percent of chronic RfD), DDT (1.3 percent of chronic RfD) and dieldrin (2.0 percent of chronic RfD). The latter two are a surprise as they both have been banned in the United States for decades. Dr. Winter explains, “their presence in food results from low environmental degradation and uptake from contaminated soil by plants.”
He goes on: “Findings from this study also indicate that the potential health benefits from further reducing one’s exposure to pesticide residues through purchase of organic foods may not provide any appreciable benefit given the very low level of pesticide residues consumers are typically exposed to from conventionally produced foods and the finding that organic foods commonly have been shown to contain pesticide residues as well, although at lower frequency than their conventional counterparts.”
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