interesting article on an organic diet study

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Organic diets keep kids pesticide free

 

By CHRISTINE DELL'AMORE

UPI Consumer Health Correspondent

 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Children who switched their diets for

only a few days to organic foods dramatically and immediately lowered

the amount of toxic pesticides in their bodies, researchers report.

 

Lead author Chensheng Lu of Emory University found that when kids eat

organic foods, pesticides in their body plummet to undetectable levels

-- even when following the diet for only five days.

 

" An organic diet does provide protective measures for pesticide

exposure in kids, " said Lu, who presented his research at a panel at

the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St.

Louis. His study appeared in the journal Environmental Health

Perspectives.

 

Lu designed a novel intervention study by substituting organic foods

into the diets of 23 elementary school children in the Seattle area.

All the kids, who were aged 3 to 11, had metabolites -- or evidence of

pesticides -- in their urine at the study's start. But as soon as they

began eating organic foods, the concentration of metabolites dropped

to essentially zero. Once they returned to their conventional diet,

the pesticides levels bounced back up.

 

The parents were given shopping lists to buy organic vegetables,

fruits and juices, as well as wheat and corn products. Meat and dairy

products were left out, Lu said, because these foods don't usually

have pesticide residues. The parents fed their children organic foods

for five consecutive days during a 15-day study period. The

researchers evaluated the kids four times over the course of a year by

analyzing their urine and saliva.

 

Lu said he is confident that the pesticide reductions can be

attributed to the kids' diet, because the particular class of

pesticides studied, called organophosphorus pesticides, or OPs, are

not found in households. The kids ingested these pesticides from

eating conventional foods, and not from playing in grass treated with

chemicals, for example.

 

Although this study to some degree proves the obvious --

pesticide-free foods create pesticide-free children -- co-author

Richard Fenske at the University of Washington says he was impressed

by the magnitude of difference in the results.

 

So should parents be worried?

 

Lu and Fenske claim the health risks to children are still uncertain,

although Lu points out that there's no getting around the fact a

pesticide is a neurotoxin. Since the chemicals disrupt enzymes in the

brain which govern communication, exposure to pesticides could damage

a child's brain. These chemicals are developed, after all, to kill

bugs by paralyzing or over-exciting their neurological systems.

 

" In terms of the impact of these low levels of chemicals on a regular

basis in a developing organism -- and that's what a child's

neurological system is -- this is extremely important that we try to

understand this, " Fenske said.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency warns children may be sensitive to

pesticides because their excretory systems are not developed enough to

excrete pesticides, and that in relation to their body weight, kids

eat and drink more than adults.

 

Currently, researchers are studying whether conditions like attention

deficit disorder, lowered IQs, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's

disease can be linked to early exposure to pesticides. Children are

most vulnerable to pesticides from formation of the fetus up to 2

years of age.

 

Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist of The Organic Center, a Rhode

Island-based nonprofit encouraging the widespread adoption of organic

foods and processes, says there's enough consensus to act now to rid

agriculture of pesticides. He mentioned the work of Robin Whyatt at

Columbia University with pregnant women in New York. Whyatt found that

birth weight and birth length is lower in children whose mothers were

exposed to pesticides.

 

Benbrook said he was amazed at how fast and how significantly the

urinary metabolites fell in Lu's study participants.

 

" This is very encouraging. What it says is this point is bigger than

the debate about organics. If farmers were to change how they managed

pests for six or eight crops, we could essentially eliminate most of

pesticide exposure and take this risk factor out of equation, " he said.

 

Lu emphasized children also get exposed in other outlets, for example

around the home or in public sports fields, where pesticides are often

oversprayed.

 

" You have to accept the fact a farmer needs to use pesticides to have

healthy crops for harvest, but is it really necessary for parents to

use pesticides around the home? " he asked.

 

Overall, parents should be aware of how their kids could be in contact

with pesticides, Lu said. Since organics tend to cost more than

conventional foods, parents don't need to go 100 percent organic to

get protective benefits, he said. He recommends checking out

www.ewg.org, which provides a list of foods and their pesticide risk.

 

" The message of this paper is not to scare parents from eating

conventional diets, but it's for them to think about pesticide

exposure as a whole, and how to minimize the exposure. Diet is not

necessarily the only answer, " Lu said.