JECH Article
- Persistent Pesticides in U.S. Food
October 18, 2002
The November 2002 issue of the international
Journal for Epidemiology and
Community Health highlights PANNA's findings on persistent pesticides
in the
U.S. food supply, and includes several articles commenting on our findings
and recommendations. Below is a copy of
the Journal's press release, which includes links to all of the articles
in
the debate. To view on-line press coverage, go to WebMD at
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/1671.53943.
See also an article from The
Globe and Mail (Canada) below.
JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY AND
COMMUNITY HEALTH
International action on
toxic chemicals in food too slow
[Debate: 2002; 56: 813- 30]
International action on toxic
chemicals in food has been much too slow,
argue a series of experts in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community
Health. Much more stringent measures are required.
Around 150 countries signed up
to the Stockholm Convention on persistent
organic pollutants (POPs). This is an international treaty drawn up in
May
2001, to phase out the use of a class of chemical agents used in food
production and manufacturing. But as of October only 22 countries had
ratified it (http://www.pops.int/documents/signature/signstatus.htm).
Fifty are needed to implement
it.
Schafer and Kegley of the Pesticide
Action Network of North America argue
that POP residues are found in approximately 20 per cent of the US food
supply, with five or more in one foodstuff not uncommon.
POPs persist in the environment for many years, travel long distances,
and
accumulate in fatty tissues. Even extremely small levels of exposure pose
serious health risks, they say.
The most common POPS are DDT,
its metabolites, and dieldrin. Estimated
daily doses of dieldrin alone exceed US Environmental Protection Agency
and
the US Agency for Toxic Substances Control risk thresholds for children,
they say.
Eating a full day's diet of items
contaminated with DDT, including eggs,
milk, fish, fruit, vegetables, toast and potatoes, at levels permitted
by
the US Food and Drugs Administration would bring an adult's level of
exposure to 90 times the safe limit.
Organochlorine (OC) insecticides
pose an enormous problem to organic food
producers, says Charles Benbrook of Benbrook Consulting Services, Idaho.
Sixty per cent of US sample organic
vegetables tested contained pesticides
contaminated with OCs, he says. Some are still in use, including
endosulfan. Lindane also continues to be widely used to treat head lice.
Tim Meredith of the International
Programme on Chemical Safety at the World
Health Organisation, argues that more research is needed to determine
the
actual risks of extremely low levels of POPs to human health, especially
in
infants and children. There is no scientific consensus, he says, that
such
levels are directly implicated in breast cancer or declining sperm count.
But Solomon and Huddle of the
US Natural Resources Defense Council, contend
that "Instead of expending our efforts debating the exact risk from
banned
chemicals in the US food supply today, we should direct our efforts toward
eliminating all [such] chemicals."
Schafer and Kegley conclude: "Prevention
of further food contamination must
be a national health policy priority in every country. Early ratification
and rapid implementation of this treaty should be an urgent priority for
all
governments."
Contacts:
Kristin Schafer, Pesticide Action
Network, San Francisco, USA.
Tel: +1 415 981 1771 (Mon/Weds)
Email: kristins@panna.org
Dr Charles Benbrook, Benbrook
Consulting Services, Idaho, USA.
Tel: +1 208 263 5236
Email: benbrook@hillnet.com
Tim Meredith, International Programme
on Chemical Safety, WHO, Geneva,
Switzerland.
Tel: + 41 22 791 3590
Email: mereditht@who.int
Gina Solomon, Natural Resources
Defense Council, San Francisco, USA
Tel: +1 415 777 0220
Email: gsolomon@nrdc.org
For further information please
contact Public Affairs Division, British
Medical Association, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP, Tel:
+44 (0)20 7383 6254
or email: pressoffice@bma.org.uk
After 6pm and at weekends telephone: +44 (0)1923 350 436 /+44 (0)20 8674
6294 / +44 (0)20 8651 5130 / +44 (0) 208 444 7992 / +44 (0) 1525 379 792
PLEASE NOTE:
The BMJ Specialist Journal press
release is available to journalists on the
BMA web site press centre: http://www.bma.org.uk
; the EurekAlert web site run by
the American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://www.eurekalert.org
and on AlphaGalileo, the internet press centre for European science,
engineering and technology: http://www.alphagalileo.org.
BMJ web site: http://www.bmj.com
BMA
web site: http://www.bma.org.uk
Email: pressoffice@bma.org.uk
Embargo: 23:01 hrs Monday 14 October 2002 UK Time
Ends
* * * * *
The Globe and Mail
Pesticides banned many
years ago still in some foods
By ANDRé PICARD
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER
Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - Page A10
About 20 per cent of the food
we eat is contaminated with trace amounts
of pesticides, even though most of them have been banned for decades,
a
new report says.
A typical diet features between
60-70 hits daily of toxic chemicals such
as DDT, dieldrin and dioxin, according to the study published in today's
edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The
San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network, which conducted the
analysis based on U.S. government data, said that finding up to five
chemicals in popular foods such as salmon, cheese and cucumbers is
routine.
The group said that adults who
eat a well-rounded diet may be ingesting
up to 90 times the acceptable limit for exposure to a group of chemicals
known as persistent organic pollutants. POPs are described as a class
of
chemicals that are "among the most insidiously dangerous compounds
ever
produced" because they persist in the environment for years and can
build up in the body's fatty tissues.
The POPs most likely to be found
in food, DDT and dieldrin, are
pesticides that have both been banned in North America since the early
1970s.
The Pesticide Action Network identified
the Top 10 foods contaminated
with POPs, in alphabetical order: butter, cantaloupe, cucumbers, meat
loaf, peanuts, popcorn, radishes, spinach, summer squash and winter
squash.
The group said the typical Thanksgiving
dinner consumed by Canadians
over the long weekend was likely high in chemical content.
The authors calculated that a
typical holiday meal consisting of 11
ingredients -- notably turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, green beans,
squash, pickles and pumpkin pie -- featured 38 "hits" of POPs.
A second report, published in
the same edition of the journal, found
that three-quarters of conventionally grown produce and one-quarter of
organically grown produce contain chemical residues.
The analyses focused on 12 chemical
compounds targeted to be phased out
in the Stockholm Convention on POPs. Canada is one of only 22 countries
in the world to have ratified the convention.
"Prevention of further food
contamination must be a national health
policy priority in every country," said PAN's Kristin Schafer, the
principal author of the report. "Early ratification and rapid
implementation of this treaty should be an urgent priority for all
governments."
In a related commentary in the
same edition of the journal, Tim Meredith
of the World Health Organization's chemical safety program agrees that
it is important for all countries to ratify the convention on POPs.
At the same time, however, he
accuses the environment group that
prepared the report of fear-mongering, saying that while 20 per cent of
foods may contain extremely low levels of these chemicals, "there
is no
scientific consensus that such levels are hazardous to most humans."
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