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For 27 years, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), has been working tirelessly across six continents to bring about a real, sustainable, global food system reform.

It raises public awareness, promotes the elimination of highly hazardous pesticides and offers solutions that protect people and the environment.

On its webpage, PAN says of pesticides:

‘Their mass introduction into farming 70 years ago, along with petro-chemically derived fertilizers, set U.S. farming down a costly and unsustainable path. Along the way, community-scale farming was nearly destroyed, generations have suffered ill health ranging from cancer to autism and Parkinson’s (and) biodiversity has taken big hits…’

In its determination to turn the tide, PAN works to loosen the pesticide industry’s control over global agriculture by holding accountable those governmental bodies charged with regulating pesticides. But beyond these activities, PAN is always aware that its real power is the power of the people in demanding - and expecting - change.

Now, with the release of its new website ‘What’s On My Food’, PAN has taken a great step towards its goal of engaging a wider public in its unrelenting demand for cleaner, healthier food. A searchable database designed to make the public problem of pesticide exposure visible and more understandable, ‘What’sOnMyFood’ is timely, meets an ever-increasing need for valid information – and is easy to use!

With all its produce items neatly listed in alphabetical order, the study allows you to compare test results for organic, conventional, domestic and ‘imported’ products (imported into USA in this case).

The What’sOnMyFood study is awesome in its span and scope

USDA’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) has been cross-referenced with toxicology* data from Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and other authoritative listings, with results based on tens of thousands of sample tests on 89 foods that have been carried out consistently since 1999. Easily read summaries of USDA test results in the PAN ‘What’sOnMyFood’ database can be searched for three kinds of information:

1. How often is a pesticide residue found in a food?

2. On average, how much of a pesticide residue is found in a food?

3. What is the maximum amount of a pesticide residue in a food?

Check out What’sOnMyFood here: http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/

Note: Tests for any given food are often conducted in multiple years. In all cases, WhatsOnMyFood shows only the most recent test year. The test results for Apples come from test year 2005.

*Toxicology is the study of chemical poisoning effects on living things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicology

Pesticides, but not other environmental contaminants, may boost the long-term risk for developing Parkinson’s disease by 70%, a new study suggests.

Their finding does back up earlier animal studies linking pesticide exposure to motor function abnormalities and lower levels of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine. Declines in dopamine have long been associated with Parkinson’s.

“This is the first large human study that shows that exposure to pesticide is associated with a higher incidence of Parkinson’s,” said study lead author Dr. Alberto Ascherio, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Ascherio and his colleagues discussed their work in a previous issue of the Annals of Neurology.

The authors reviewed lifestyle surveys completed in both 1982 and in 2001 by over 143,000 participants in the U.S. “Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort,” launched in 1982.

The researchers studied 413 participants who were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Exposed patients were twice as likely to be blue-collar workers and 14 times more likely to work as either a farmer, rancher, or fisherman.

The Harvard team found that, regardless of occupation, pesticide exposure boosted long-term Parkinson’s risk by 70 percent over the long-term.

Robin Elliot, executive director for the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation in New York City, described the findings as “important and solid.”

“This is certainly the biggest and most serious populations study on people, and it appears to be the best proof today that there is a general association between pesticide and Parkinson’s among people,” said Elliot. “It merits further investigation,” he said.

Times are a changing, and the green movement has taken hold throughout most of the country. People are recycling, buying more environmentally friendly cars, re-using shopping bags, and eating organic. To some, this great switch to sustainable living could cause some frustration, as not all stores offer organic.  Hunting down hormone-free, organic milk may take a chunk out of your schedule. Not to fret, my eco-conscious friend!

There is a great website by the Environmental Working Group - www.EWG.org that examines the least and most toxic fruits and vegetables, helping you decide how organic you can afford to go. Of course, the more hormone-free, non-toxic you can be for you and your family - the better!

Let’s start with what you should absolutely buy organic because they are the MOST toxic. In order of toxicity: peaches (absolute most), apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes, and pears. The problem lies in their sweet, juicy, thin skin that enables pesticides and herbicides to absorb right in to the body. Even if you peel your skins, the fruit/vegetable itself holds many nasty chemicals you don’t need.

The next list is the top 10 LEAST toxic fruits/vegetables and is probably okay to buy non-organic. In order of low-level toxicity: onion (absolute least), avocado, sweet corn (non-GMO), pineapple, mangoes, sweet peas, asparagus, kiwi, bananas, and cabbage.

Do you see the pattern? These foods don’t have thin, juicy skins; they tend to have tougher outsides that are peeled and therefore difficult to penetrate by a chemical. Even the difference between lettuce (which is more toxic) and cabbage (least toxic) lies in the stiffness of their leaves. Cabbage leaves are much more firm and difficult for chemicals to absorb into.

Please consider these lists when you are out shopping and doing your part to support your family’s health. If your neighborhood stores don’t carry organic, look to farmer’s markets and buy local!

Switching to organic foods provides children “dramatic and immediate” protection from widely used pesticides that are used on a variety of crops, according to a study by a team of federally funded scientists.

Concentrations of two organophosphate pesticides –malathion and chlorpyrifos — declined substantially in the bodies of elementary-school age children during a five-day period when organic foods were substituted for conventional foods.

The two chemicals are the most commonly used insecticides in U.S. agriculture. More than 2 million pounds were applied to California crops in 2003, according to records of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.

The health effects of exposure to minute amounts of pesticides found in food are largely unknown, especially for children. Some research, however, suggests that the residue may harm the developing nervous system.

For 15 days, a team of environmental health scientists from the University of Washington, Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the urine of 23 elementary-school age children in the Seattle area.

During the first three days and last seven days, the children ate their normal foods. But during the middle five days, organic items were substituted for most of their diet, including fruits, vegetables, juices and wheat and corn-based processed items such as cereal and pasta.

Average levels of both pesticides in the children “decreased to the non-detect levels immediately after the introduction of organic diets and remained non-detectable until the conventional diets were reintroduced,” the researchers reported Thursday in the online version of the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

When they ate organic foods, the children on average had zero malathion detected in their urine, with a high of 7 parts per billion in one child. But when the children returned to eating conventional foods, one child had as much as 263 ppb and the average increased to 1.6 ppb.

For chlorpyrifos, the children had less than one part per billion when they ate organic foods, but the average increased five-fold as soon as they returned to their previous diet. The findings suggest that children are exposed to organophosphate chemicals mainly through food, not through spraying in homes or other sources. In 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned most residential uses of chlorpyrifos but has left most agricultural uses unrestricted.

Three other organophosphate pesticides that are not widely used on farms and are more highly restricted by the EPA were undetectable in most of the children, according to the study, directed by Emory University’s Dr. Chensheng Lu.

“In conclusion,” the researchers wrote, “we were able to demonstrate that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposure to organophosphorus pesticides that are commonly used in agricultural production.”

Margaret Reeves, a staff scientist at the San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network North America, said the findings are “not surprising because we know that food is an important source of (organophosphate) exposure. Also, we know that these pesticides don’t last very long … in the body, and you can have a relatively quick response” to a diet change.

Pesticide manufacturers say that while low levels of residue are detectable on many products, there is no evidence that children are harmed by them. They say that pesticides, which are the most highly tested and regulated chemicals in the United States, are vital to providing an affordable and plentiful world food supply.

But Reeves said the children’s study “is a pretty strong argument that (organic food) is a good way to go, if you have access to it and can afford it.”

For parents on a tight budget, minimize your children’s exposure by substituting organic products for those that contain the most residue. Experts advise parents to wash produce and peel skins if they buy conventional foods but for foods that cannot be peeled, such as grapes and strawberries, organic may be a wise choice.

In the late 1990s, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed that nearly three-quarters of foods sampled from conventionally grown crops contained pesticide residue, while 23 percent of organic products did.

The Consumers Union reported in 2000 that peaches, apples, pears, grapes, green beans, spinach, winter squash, strawberries and cantaloupe had the highest levels of pesticide residues. Those with few residues included bananas, broccoli, canned peaches, canned or frozen peas, canned or frozen corn, milk, orange juice, apple juice and grape juice.

Could a reduction in pesticide exposure through personal care products also bring about dramatic results in children?