S3: Science, Statistics, and Skepticism by Fourat Janabi

Author:Fourat Janabi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science
Published: 2013-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

95.4% were from chemicals less toxic than the caffeine in your morning coffee

90.5% of detections were less toxic gram for gram than the ibuprofen found in Advil tablets sold over-the-counter at your local pharmacy

73% of detections were for pesticides less toxic than the vanilla in your ice-cream

36.6% of detected residues were for chemicals less toxic to mammals than salt, vinegar, or citric acid in lemons.

Yet, even here, that is not context enough. What matters most is the EPA-established tolerance levels, which are restrictions based on a risk assessment of the chemicals and at what dosages they can be used safely. This process takes many years, costs upwards of $100 million, and produces values that include a wide safety margin on the order of a hundred-fold below the smallest value at which side-effects were reported. In fact, more than 99% of sampled produce had pesticide residues lower than the EPA tolerance, and more than half were a 100-fold lower than the tolerance, while only 7.8% were within 0.1 to 1 times the tolerance set by the EPA.

When it comes to chemical toxicology, dose is the only thing that matters. And as the EPA data indicate, the difference between what you ingest and what can harm you is a chasm several orders of magnitude wide. Rest easy, your pesticides aren’t going to kill, harm, or reduce your health. Even if organic produce used no pesticides, and pesticides were banned, it still wouldn’t make the food-system safer. Jayson Lusk, a food and agricultural economist wrote in The Food Police that “some studies have estimated that using pesticides in food production causes about 20 deaths per year in the United States. Twenty deaths are a tragedy. What about twenty-six thousand deaths? That spectacularly larger tragedy is the projected effect of a ban on pesticides, which would drive up prices of fruits and vegetables (and thus drive down their consumption and increase cancer rates). Eating fruits and vegetables is much healthier than pesticides are risky.” There is such a thing as risk avoidance, but taking no risks is, in itself, a risk.12

This sentiment was echoed in a case study by the British Industrial Biological Research Association that estimated if Americans increased their fruit and vegetable consumption by one serving per day, up to 20,000 cancer cases could be prevented every year while only 10 cancer cases might be added by the increased pesticide exposure. 50-60 years ago, people would have been right to assume that organic pesticides were safer than conventional pesticides. Today however that is no longer the case. Research and development in the science of pesticides has greatly reduced collateral damage and increased effectiveness by orders of magnitude.13 The modern food system is remarkably safe. Our farmers deserve praise, not vilification.

To put the safety of the modern food system into perspective, let’s compare one of the more frequently used pesticides on organic farms—copper compounds—and current synthetic pesticides. Copper compounds, as it turns out, have a far higher acute oral toxicity. (The acute oral

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