Your average apple doesn't come with an ingredients list,
but if it did, you'd need a degree in chemistry to read it.
Azinphos-methyl,carbaryl, chlorpyrifos,endosulfan, thiabendazole: these are just a few of
the dozens of pesticides detected on red, raw apples by the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as part of its ongoing
Total Diet Study (TDS). Four times a year the FDA goes
shopping, buying multiple samples of 261 different food
items from supermarkets, grocery stores and fast-food
restaurants in alternating geographic regions. Like foods
are combined, prepared for the table, then analyzed for
pesticide residues, radionucleotides, industrial chemicals
and other toxic elements.
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Items range from produce, meats and milk to tacos, tuna
casserole and commercial chocolate chip cookies. Not
surprisingly, fruits and vegetables rank first as the most
chemically treated commodities. Perhaps more unexpected is
the fact that DDT is the most frequently detected
poison-found in a whopping 22% of the foods tested in 1999
- despite a 25-year ban on its use in the U.S. While this
notorious organochlorine is still used by some foreign
nations, mainly for mosquito control, FDA and EPA officials
attribute the prevalence of DDT and its metabolites in our
food largely to the pesticide's resilience. Today's crops
continue to absorb the remains of the 1,350,000,000 pounds
of DDT dumped on U.S. soil during the past 30 years.
The fag.. , another banned organochlorine, shows up in
about 14% of our food is further proof of the staying power
of these persistent organic pollutants.
