Most produce has no trace of pesticide residue

[Thinktank]

not really.

farmers still blast their crops with pesticides everywhere. especially california.

[Fancy]

In 2012, DPR improved its capacity to detect pesticide residues.

From Jonrox's link.

[coffeeFreak]

The results from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation 2012 study (this is just a small part of the article - follow the link for more information, including the 8 items with the highest percentage of illegal residue levels):

Accepting any government report at face value is like believing the emperor was actually wearing clothes. I guess you can just call me jaded.

Here are eight myths about pesticides to consider.

Myths about Pesticides

Myths about pesticides are a testimony to the power of advertising, marketing and lobbying. The big pesticide corporations, like big tobacco and the oil industry, have systematically manufactured doubt about the science behind pesticides and fostered the myth that their products are essential to life as we know it — and harmless if "used as directed".

The book Merchants of Doubt calls it the "Tobacco Strategy" — orchestrated PR and legal campaigns to deny the evidence, often using rogue scientists to invent controversy around so-called "junk science" to deny everything from cancer-causing second-hand smoke to global warming to the hazards of DDT. Here are eight of the seemingly plausible myths we hear every day:

1) Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world
2) Pesticides aren't that dangerous
3) The dose makes the poison
4) The government is protecting us
5) GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides
6) We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides
7) Pesticides are the answer to global climate change
8) We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc.

Myth #1: Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world

Reality: The most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date tells us that what can feed the world — what feeds most of the world now, in fact — is smaller-scale agriculture that does not rely on pesticides.

More to the point, hunger in an age of plenty isn't a problem of production (or yields, as the pesticide industry claims), efficiency or even distribution. It is a matter of priorities. If we were serious about feeding people we wouldn't grow enough extra grains to feed 1/3 of the world's hungry and then pour them into gas tanks. Dow, Monsanto, Syngenta and other pesticide producers have marketed their products as necessary to feed the world. Yet as insecticide use increased in the U.S. by a factor of 10 in the 50 years following World War II, crop losses almost doubled. Corn is illustrative: in place of crop rotations, most acreage was planted year after year only with corn. Despite more than a 1000-fold increase in use of organophosphate insecticides, crop losses to insects rose from 3.5% to 12% (D. Pimental and M. Pimental, 2008).

Myth #2: Pesticides aren't that dangerous

Reality: Pesticides are dangerous by design. They are engineered to cause death. And harms to human health are very well documented, with children especially at risk. Just a few examples recently in the news:

An entire class of pesticides (organophosphates) has been linked to higher rates of ADHD in children.
The herbicide atrazine, found in 94% of our water supply, has been linked to birth defects, infertility and cancer.
Women exposed to the pesticide endosulfan during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children.
Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are 5 times more likely to develop breast cancer.
A large and growing body of peer-reviewed, scientific studies document that pesticides are harmful to human health. The environmental harms of pesticides are also clear, from male frogs becoming females after exposure, to collapsing populations of bats and honeybees.

Myth #3: The dose makes the poison

Reality: If one were exposed to an extremely small amount of one ingredient of a pesticide at a time, and it was a chemical of relatively low toxicity, it might pose little danger. That’s unfortunately an unlikely scenario. First, pesticide products typically contain several potentially dangerous ingredients (including so-called 'inerts' not listed on the label). Second, we’re all exposed to a cocktail of pesticides in our air, water, food and on the surfaces we touch, and combinations of chemicals can interact to be more toxic than any one of them acting alone. Third, many pesticides are endocrine disruptors — which if the timing is "right" can do lifechanging damage to the human body with extremely low doses that interfere with the delicate human hormone system. Finally, the research considered when reviewing a pesticide is funded and conducted by the corporations marketing the product, leading to distortion of findings.

Myth #4: The government is protecting us

Reality: Our regulatory system is not doing the job. More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied every year on U.S. farms, forests, golf courses and lawns, farmworkers and rural communities suffer illness throughout the spray season and beyond, and infants around the world are born with a mixture of pesticides and other chemicals in their bodies. “The prevailing regulatory approach in the United States is reactionary rather than precautionary,” concluded the President’s Cancer Panel in May 2010, “instead of requiring industry…to prove their safety, the public bears the burden of proving that a given environmental exposure is harmful.”

The cornerstone of pesticide regulation is a fundamentally flawed process of "risk assessment" that cannot begin to capture the realities of pesticide exposure and the health hazards they pose. EPA officials remain reliant on research data submitted by pesticide manufacturers, who do everything they can to drag out reviews of their products, often for decades. Lawsuits are pending to force EPA to follow the law and speed up review. But a better, common sense precautionary approach to protecting us would assess alternatives to highly hazardous pesticides rather than accepting public exposure to pesticides as a necessary evil. Such a shift will require fundamental federal policy reform.

Myth #5: GMOs reduce reliance on pesticides

Reality: Genetically modified organisms are driving pesticide use, and no surprise: the biggest GMO seed sellers are the pesticide companies themselves. The goal of introducing GMO seed is simple: increase corporate control of global agriculture. More than 80% of GMO crops grown worldwide are designed to tolerate increased herbicide use, not reduce pesticide use.

Monsanto, the world leader in patented engineered seed, would have us believe that its GMOs increase yields, will reduce environmental impact and mitigate climate change, and that farmers use fewer pesticides when they plant the company’s seeds. None of this is true. On average, Monsanto’s biotech seeds reduce yield. In 2009, Monsanto admitted that its “Bollguard” GMO cotton attracted pink bollworm — the very pest it was designed to control — in areas of Gujarat, India’s primary cotton-growing state. Introduced in 1996, Monsanto’s Bollguard seeds — which include toxic traits from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) — now account for half the cotton grown worldwide. In India, the productivity of Bt cotton has fallen while pesticide costs have risen almost 25%, contributing to the tragic epidemic of suicide by India’s debt-ridden farmers.

In 2009, 93% of U.S. GMO soybeans and 80% of GMO corn were grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. “RoundUp Ready” corn and soybeans were designed for use with Monsanto’s weed killer, and mostly they feed animals and cars, not people. Now that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to RoundUp, Dow and Monsanto are introducing GMO corn that includes tolerance of 2,4-D, a more dangerous herbicide related to Agent Orange used in Viet Nam.

Myth #6: We're weaning ourselves off of pesticides

Reality: After 20 years of market stagnation, the pesticide industry entered a period of vigorous growth in 2004. The global pesticide market is approximately $40 billion, and expected to grow at almost 3% per year, reaching $52 billion by 2014. About 80% of the market is for agricultural uses, but non-agricultural sales and profit margins are growing faster, driven by the rise of a global middleclass adopting chemically reliant lawns and landscapes. In addition, the industry strategy of promoting GMO seeds, most of which are engineered to tolerate higher applications of herbicides, has driven increased sales of weed killers.

Myth #7: Pesticides are the answer to global climate change

Reality: Multinational corporations are working hard to increase market share by exploiting climate change as a sales opportunity. As of 2008, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF and others had filed 532 patents for “climate-related genes,” touting the imminent arrival of a new generation of seeds engineered to withstand heat and drought. Their approach will further restrict the age-old practice of farmers saving seeds with desirable traits — a practice that may prove even more important as the climate changes in unpredictable ways and demands more, not less, farm-scale diversity. In fact, evidence is showing that sustainable farming provides important solutions to climate change, with systems that create far fewer greenhouse gases, promote on-farm biodiversity and create carbon sinks to offset warming. Despite this latest gene-grab, none of these companies has yet been able to engineer any kind of yield-increasing or “climate-ready” seeds. Their promises to end world hunger through drought-, heat- and salt-tolerant seeds and crops with enhanced nutrition have proven empty.

Myth #8: We need DDT to end malaria, combat bedbugs, etc.

Reality: The recent resurgence of bedbugs has nothing to do with the 1972 ban of DDT. Bedbugs, like many mosquitos, are resistant to DDT — and they were decades ago when DDT was still in use. In some cases DDT even makes bedbug infestations worse, since instead of killing them it just irritates them, making them more active. DDT had been abandoned as a solution to malaria in the U.S. long before it was banned for agriculture use, and around the world practitioners on the ground battling the deadly disease report that DDT is less effective in controlling malaria than many other tools. A small cadre of advocates continue to aggressively promote widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, bedbugs — even West Nile Virus — despite it's lack of effectiveness and growing evidence of human health harms, even at low levels of exposure.

http://www.panna.org/science/myths

Here is an interesting report from 2008. Of course it too must be taken with some skepticism as it would be naive to think the Pesticide Action Network hasn't imposed its own bias into the material presented, but it's still worth checking out.

Who Owns Nature?
Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Codification of Life
http://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/etc_WhoOwnsNature.pdf

[masen]

The fungicide Thiabendazole is used often after it is harvested and usually in conjunction with the waxing process as a dip or spray. The farmer often has no control over what happens to his/her fruit when it leaves his farm. This is the problem when one doesn't buy locally and there is a middleman. It is better to buy direct from the farmer and then there is a much better chance of getting healthy fruit.

[Thinktank]

way to kill the thread - coffeeFreak.

1) Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world

^ this is the biggest lie the world has ever heard.

can anyone tell me why it is such a big lie?

[Thinktank]

Strawberries
54 Pesticide Residues Found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program1,2,3 Human Health Effects:
9 — Known or Probable Carcinogens4
24 — Suspected Hormone Disruptors
11 — Neurotoxins
12 — Developmental or Reproductive Toxins

Environmental Effects:
19 — Honeybee Toxins5


http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=ST

[Thinktank]

Bhutan wants to be the first country to eliminate herbicides and pesticides from the food chain.

If there was ever a nation that could see the purpose behind organic, sustainable farming, it would be a nation that is composed mostly of farmers. Such a place does exist, and it soon may be the first nation to go 100% organic, paving the way for others to do the same on a global scale.

http://www.undergroundhealth.com/bhutan ... 0-organic/

[Thinktank]

1) Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world

^ this is the biggest lie the world has ever heard.

can anyone tell me why it is such a big lie?

Okay no one could answer the question so I will answer the question.

If we want to feed the world, tractors are necessary.
We should be giving small farmers everywhere - tractors.
We should be providing a way for those farmers to transport their stuff to market - cold storage buildings,
trucks etc.

All we're doing is shoving millions of lbs of pesticides down those thir world countries
farmer's throats, and allowing our subsidized crops into their countries to bankrupt them
so big corporations cna take over.

We don't want to feed the world. We want to screw it up.

[logicalview]

1) Pesticides are necessary to the feed the world

^ this is the biggest lie the world has ever heard.

Actually - the biggest lie the world has ever heard is this - man-generated CO2 is affecting the world's climate.

As for Bhutan, bully for them for going 100% organic. Although I will say this - if even one person starves because of their "heroic" stance thanks to a bug epidemic or weed infestation that they can't control, then shame on them for pandering to the nattering idiots and elitists of the world who care about this kind of crap. If anyone starves purely because they can't produce enough food, then shame on them. Of course, we'll never hear about it, just as we never hear just how bad wind turbines are. The leftists would never want us to hear anything bad about organics, nor about wind power, though both are fraught with issues.

[Thinktank]

Study finds toxic chemicals linked to autism, ADHD

Date February 16, 2014 The Age Newspaper Melbourne Australia

Leading chemical experts are calling for a radical overhaul of chemical regulation to protect children from everyday toxins that may be causing a global ''silent epidemic'' of brain development disorders such as autism, dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A review published in The Lancet Neurology on Saturday said current regulations were inadequate to safeguard foetuses and children from potentially hazardous chemicals found in the environment and everyday items such as clothing, furniture and toys.

Philippe Grandjean from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Philip Landrigan from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York said that, in the past seven years, the number of recognised chemical causes of neurodevelopmental disorders doubled from six to 12.

These include lead, arsenic, pesticides such as DDT, solvents, methylmercury that is found in some fish, flame retardants that are often added to plastics and textiles, and manganese - a commonly mined metal that can get into drinking water.
The list also controversially includes fluoride, a mineral found in water, plants and toothpaste.

Many health authorities including the World Health Organisation and Australian governments say low levels of fluoride in drinking water is safe and protects teeth against decay, but Dr Grandjean and Dr Landrigan said a meta-analysis of 27 studies, mainly from China, had found children in areas with high levels of fluoride in water had significantly lower IQ scores than those living in low-level fluoride areas.

Dr Grandjean and Dr Landrigan said that, since 2006, the number of chemicals known to damage the human brain more generally, but that are not regulated to protect children's health, had increased from 202 to 214.

Of the newly identified toxins, pesticides constitute the largest group. The pair said this could be the tip of the iceberg because the vast majority of the more than 80,000 industrial chemicals widely used in the United States have never been tested for their toxic effects on the developing foetus or child.

They said one of the barriers was the logistics of studying the impact of such chemicals on children's brains to meet the "huge amount of proof required" before regulation such as banning a chemical was enacted.

"The only way to reduce toxic contamination is to ensure mandatory developmental neurotoxicity testing of existing and new chemicals before they come into the marketplace," Dr Landrigan said.

They proposed a new international prevention strategy that would put the onus on chemical producers to demonstrate that their products are low risk using a similar testing process to pharmaceuticals. They also proposed a new international regulatory agency to co-ordinate these measures.

Professor Ian Rae, who advises the United Nations Environment Program, said authorities in Australia, Canada and Japan were already working on better data for chemicals introduced without the kind of testing required now.

''Our National Industrial Chemical (Notification and Assessment) authority is prioritising the 38,000 chemicals on the Australian list and generating assessments for those of greatest concern,'' he said.

Oliver Jones, a lecturer in analytical chemistry at RMIT University, said many of the chemicals listed in the review were already strictly controlled or banned in Australia and that, where they are used, it was not "for fun or with malice but to save lives".

"DDT helps stop the spread of malaria, flame retardants reduce deaths from fires in the home and manganese is a required trace element for all living organisms," Dr Jones said.

"In addition, testing every single chemical in use for every possible affect is impossible. That said, we should never be complacent and more reasoned debate and research into best practice of the management of chemicals is very welcome."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/s ... z2tTdLaXlN

[twobits]

I guess that settles it then thinktank. Back to the caves and flint. That ought to really improve health and extend longevity.

[hobbyguy]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/new-pesticide-technology-sprays-only-weeds-1.2696146

This new technology, that only sprays the weeds - not the crops - is a start in the right direction.

"The equipment costs about $20,000. Zaman said a medium-sized farm would save that in pesticide costs."

My guess is that most farmers would love to eliminate their pesticide costs.

Maybe as this technology gains acceptance, gets better and better, it can be adapted for insect control as well, recognizing which plants have a problem and then spraying those plants only.

Then it becomes another step to getting to less lethal pesticides. Like vinegar, which is very effective, but must be spot sprayed on the offenders only.