Harmful Breakdown Products of Pesticides
In some cases, when a pesticide is known to have harmful breakdown products, a
tolerance limit may be set for the total amount of ‘‘parent’’ pesticide and breakdown
products that may be present in or on food. In such cases, foods may be tested for all
these residues. For example, tolerances have been established for the total amount of
the pesticide endosulfan and its breakdown product endosulfan sulfate.
Permethrin
The FDA’s monitoring program routinely finds the pesticide permethrin on food.
In 1996, it was the thirteenth most commonly detected pesticide. Similar results were
found in the USDA’s monitoring of fourteen fruits and vegetables. Permethrin was
the tenth most frequently detected pesticide. It was found on spinach in 60 percent
of the samples tested and on 11 percent of the tomato samples tested. Permethrin
was also frequently detected on celery and lettuce. It has even been found in baby
food. FDA monitoring discovered it in 12 percent of samples tested. The Environ-
mental Working Group discovered that permethrin was the most commonly detected
pesticide in peach baby food, in some 44 percent of samples tested. It was also found
in plums in 11 percent of samples.^26
Daily Pesticide Exposures
Through their diets, U.S. consumers can be exposed up to seventy times each
day to residues from persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The use of POPs is not
allowed in organic agriculture. The top ten POP-contaminated food items, in al-
phabetical order, are butter, cantaloupe, cucumbers/pickles, meatloaf, peanuts, pop-
corn, radishes, spinach, summer squash, and winter squash. The two most pervasive
POPs in food are dieldrin and DDE, a compound produced when DDT
degrades.^27
More than one million children between the ages of one and five ingest at least fif-
teen pesticides every day from fruits and vegetables. More than 600,000 of these chil-
dren eat a quantity of organophosphate insecticide that the federal government
considers unsafe, and 61,000 eat doses that exceed benchmark levels by a factor of
ten or more.^28
See Tables 3.1–3.4 for more details on pesticide dosages.
The Nondetect Factor
As mentioned earlier, in some cases, a portion of the measurements of the levels of
pesticide residue present on food shows no detection of residues. These ‘‘nondetects’’
(NDs) do not necessarily mean that the pesticide is not present, but simply that any
amount of pesticide present is below the level that could be detected or reliably mea-
sured using a particular analytical method.
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