Apple a day may poison children

[Guest guest]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1273087,00.html

 

Apple a day may poison children

 

Paul Brown, environment correspondent

Friday July 30, 2004

The Guardian

 

Children who eat an apple or pear a day may be

exceeding the pesticide safety threshold because of

residues on the fruit, according to research.

 

Using Department of Environment data on pesticides on

fruit collected from supermarkets, scientists

calculated that each day some children would get a

toxic level of pesticides.

 

The research, to be published on Sunday, says the

government repeatedly claims that the levels of

pesticide are safe because, instead of measuring

individual apples, researchers buy 10, mash them and

take an average reading to see if they are safe. This

is the internationally agreed method of checking

residues.

 

But government figures show that the pesticide is not

evenly spread across the batch, and one or two apples

could contain 90% or more of the pesticide in the

batch.

 

The research, published in the International Journal

of Occupational and Environmental Health, is from

Andrew Watterson of Stirling University, and Vyvyan

Howard of Liverpool University. It used mathematical

modelling to measure exposure to pesticides for

children aged between 18 months and four years old.

The pesticides involved can disrupt children's

hormones and some are suspected of causing cancer.

 

The study found that between 10 and 220 young children

a day could be exposed to pesticide residues at levels

which could pose immediate and long term threats to

health.

 

The good news for British fruit growers is that

samples grown in this country had lower residues than

imported fruit, so buying home-produced produce fruit

will reduce the danger, said Emily Diamand, Friends of

the Earth's senior food researcher and one of the

authors of the report.

 

 

Ian Brown, chairman of the government's pesticides

residue committee and a consultant toxicologist at

Southampton University, said he was confident the

maximum residue levels found in fruit tested would not

harm a toddler. The safe level for humans was set 100

times lower than a level which had no observable

effect on rats.

 

· What did you think of this article? Mail your

responses to life and include your name

and address.

 

 

Special report

What's wrong with our food?