Government plays down pesticide risks

25 September 2002

Friends of the Earth believes the Government's annual report on pesticides is playing down the risks. It believes that the Pesticide Residues Committee (PRC) should be more concerned about the potential impact on consumers, particularly babies and young children. The report finds that about a third of all food, and over a third of fruit and vegetables, tested contained pesticides, a situation which it describes as "expected".

The PRC says that it is "reassured" by the results and sticks firmly to the view that at certain levels pesticides are "safe". Even where official safety limits have been breached the PRC simply states that in these cases "there could be a small risk of mild, reversible health effects such as an upset stomach".

What the report doesn't say:

• It fails to acknowledge increasing evidence that hormone disrupting pesticides, found regularly in food, may act at very low levels and be a threat to human health. Serious concerns have been raised about exposure to these substances by the EU due to strong evidence that they may be linked with human health effects including cancers.
• It plays down the lack of knowledge about what we are actually exposed to.
• Testing is not statistically valid due to the small sample sizes. Many popular foods such as bananas are not tested annually. If we don't know what we are being exposed to in our food then it is not possible to say that there is no risk to our health.
• It downplays the uncertainty about the cocktail effect of pesticides and persists in assessing risk to health on the basis of the levels found in individual items of food.
• It neglects to mention that we are all exposed to pesticides and other chemicals from non-food sources including garden products and food packaging. Some of these are also hormone disrupting substances that work in a similar way to pesticides in food. This isn't taken into account when the PRC says that we are exposed to "safe levels".
• It downplays the potential risk to infants. New regulations were brought in this year banning pesticide residues in processed baby food in recognition that infants need special protection and because there are doubts about the adequacy of existing safety levels.
• It is out of touch with consumer demands for pesticide-free food. Although the report refers to the new Food Standards Agency policy to minimize residues in food it states that "the presence of residues is not the consumer concern. The amount of residue is what is important".

Friends of the Earth Pesticides Campaigner Sandra Bell, at said: "The Government is too complacent about pesticides in our food. It says these levels for chemicals are safe. If that's the case why have they been banned from baby food? The truth is that there is no safe limit for many of these chemicals, some of which are suspected to interfere with hormone systems even at very low levels. The Government should spend less time trying to convince us that pesticides are safe and more time helping UK farmers and growers to produce pesticide-free food."

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