Food Pesticides: What You Need to Know

Powerful chemical food pesticides are widely used to produce the fruits and vegetables we eat, and they don’t simply rinse away when we wash our foods.

It’s not widely known that the pesticides in use today by the back yard gardener and on agricultural crops, were based on chemical warfare agents that were developed in World War II.

After the war ended enterprising folks came up with the idea of marketing the leftover chemicals to farmers as a way to increase crop yields by killing insects. After all, if they worked to kill people, they would easily kill-off the crop-chomping bugs, right?

Right. And because many farmers so readily embraced the chemicals, the door was opened for the creation and marketing of the new chemical fertilizers that were introduced in the 1950’s.

Today 500 synthetic chemicals can be found in the average North American’s blood. Our babies are now born with chemical residues already in their bodies.

The earliest agricultural chemicals to be used in the United States included DDT, arsenic and lead. Sure, now we know the serious health and environmental problems these chemicals cause, but in the early 1900’s very few people questioned the safety of insecticides. Rather they welcomed them as a means to more foods at reduced costs.

Today thousands of formulations are in use, made from not just three but hundreds of different chemicals. More and cheaper foods are now on grocery store shelves than ever before, but the reduced costs are deceiving.

Sure we may pay less at the checkout counter, but what are the long-term health effects of our daily intake of small amounts of chemicals that are designed to kill or sterilize pests? The short answer is – no one knows.

Continuous low dose exposure to these numerous chemicals have never been studied in children or adults.

Degenerative Diseases

Once-rare diseases are now commonplace. It’s practically expected that at some point in life everyone will wind up with a degenerative disease or two. Maybe several. Cancer, liver disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s disease, birth defects and behavior disorders all arise from our exposure to chemicals in our environment and on our foods.

Says who? The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that “Only worker exposure to chemicals and indoor radon exposure pose greater cancer risks than the pesticide residues found in our food.”

I consider this need-to-know information in my role as mother, yet until I started doing research for this my organic foods web site and blog, I had never heard this.

Safe Pesticide Exposures Are Based on the Consumption and Body Weight of Adults

Obviously, children are smaller, and eat more food per pound of body weight than adults. Their rapidly developing bodies and brains are more vulnerable to toxins in their diets. They are at the highest risk of suffering potential negative effects of the numerous chemicals used on our food supply.

Every child eating conventionally grown foods is ingesting small amounts of several, possibly dozens of toxic chemicals everyday.

At this writing there are no guidelines for safe pesticide exposure for infants, toddlers and children.

If any of your children’s favorites are on this list of the twelve most contaminated foods, the amounts of chemical residues being ingested can quickly add up to levels that are more than likely compromising his rapidly developing cells in unpredictable ways.

The Twelve Most Contaminated Fruits and Vegetables

• Apples
• Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Cherries
• Grapes (imported)
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Potatoes
• Red Raspberries
• Spinach
• Strawberries

I know I used to think that my children eating bell peppers and apples was a good thing! Why isn’t this common knowledge? Because no one makes money by telling people how they make the apple cost so little and look so perfect. And we do only want those cheap, perfect apples don’t we? Maybe not…

Always buying organic versions of the above items for our children is an investment in their health that we can’t put a price-tag on. If that’s all you can manage then at least you know you’re avoiding the worst.

Children exposed to low doses of chemicals like PCBs and lead at critical periods of development, have been shown to have significant permanent adverse effects on learning and behavior. Will it be found eventually that some or many of the currently used chemicals, or combinations of chemicals, have similar effects? Only time will tell and then it would be too late.

What Are Your Kids Eating?

It’s vital that we, as mothers, educate ourselves about what is in and on the foods we are buying for our kids. Please visit the web site of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to get more info on pesticide contamination of produce.

They offer a complimentary PDF downloadable wallet guide to the fruits and vegetables that are highest and lowest in pesticides so when organic isn’t available you can make informed choices.

The EWG web site also explains why it’s critical to avoid pesticides as best we can, when pregnant, nursing or feeding small children.

By no means am I suggesting that for this reason bottle feeding babies would be better. Given the reality that our babies are exposed to environmental contamination from conception, breastfeeding is without a doubt the best nourishment and the most loving gift we can give them. If this is a decision you are making now, here is what the La Leche League has to say about it.