pesticides in foods decreases, it is likely that exposures will be reduced. However, this
measure does not account for many additional factors that affect exposure risk to
children. For example, some OPs pose greater risks to children than others, and resi-
dues on some goods may pose greater risks than residues on other foods due to differ-
ences in the amounts consumed. In addition, year-to-year changes in the percentages
of samples with detectable residues may be affected by the selection of foods that are
sampled each year. There is growing evidence that OPs are toxic to the developing
brain as well as the nervous system at very low levels of exposure. One carcinogenic
OP pesticide was taken off the market in 1974, but it is still found in farming soil at
such high levels that there is a 77 percent chance that a child will get too much in a
single serving of winter squash.^33Overexposed: OPs in Children’s FoodEvery day, nine out of ten American children between the ages of six months and
five years are exposed to combinations of thirteen different neurotoxic insecticides in
the foods they eat. While the amounts consumed rarely cause acute illness, OPs pose
a serious threat to children, who are rapidly growing and extremely vulnerable to
injury during fetal development, infancy, and early childhood.
The following estimates are based on the most recent EPA data available on child-
ren’s eating patterns, pesticides in food, and the toxicity of OP insecticides:
Every day, more than one million children ages five and under (one out of twenty)
eat an unsafe dose of OP insecticides. One hundred thousand of these children are
exposed to more than the EPA’s safe dose, the reference dose, by a factor of ten or
more. For infants six to twelve months of age, commercial baby food is the dominant
source of unsafe levels of OP insecticides. Baby food, apple juice, pears, applesauce,
and peaches expose about 77,000 infants each day to unsafe levels of OP insecticides.
This estimate likely understates the number of children at risk because the analysis
does not include residential and other exposures, which can be substantial. In addi-
tion, because the EPA’s estimates of a safe daily dose are based on studies on adult
animals or humans, they almost never include additional factors that would shelter
the young from the toxic effects of OPs.
This data analysis also identified foods that expose young children to toxic doses of
OPs, finding:
One out of every four times a child age five or under eats a peach, he or she is
exposed to an unsafe level of OP insecticides. Thirteen percent of apples, 7.5 percent
of pears, and 5 percent of grapes in the U.S. food supply expose the average child to
unsafe levels of OP insecticides.
A small but worrisome percentage of these fruits—1.5 to 2 percent of apples,
grapes, and pears, and 15 percent of peaches—are so contaminated that the average
twenty-five-pound one-year-old eating just two grapes or three bites of an apple, pear,
or peach (ten grams of each fruit) will consume more than the EPA’s safe daily adult
dose of OPs.90 | Pesticides