Pesticides in Your Food

An interesting series of pictures called “The Dirty Dozen: Top 12 Foods to Eat Organic” turned up on msn.com recently.

As the title suggests the foods pictured represent some of those most commonly contaminated by pesticides. They failed to explain what exactly they meant by “pesticide contamination.”

Typically pesticide contamination is measured in parts per million (ppm). What is a part per million? Here is how I like to think about it, image a room with 1 million marbles: 999,999 of those marbles are green and one of those marbles is red. The red marble represents 1 ppm. Say there are 5 red marbles in that group of 1 million, those marbles represent 5 ppm.

Okay back to pesticide contamination. The article didn’t mention if the pesticide contamination exceeded the amount allowed legally or if the concentration of those pesticides allowed was still considered harmful. On the other hand they could be making the assumption that the food items in question are not being tested properly resulting in pesticide contamination.

It is really hard to determine what exactly they mean by pesticide contamination. The statements along with the pictures support all three cases listed above.

Just because a product is organic does not mean that it will not have pesticide contamination. There are some pesticides that can be used in organic agriculture. These products are approved by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI). To see listings of what can be legally used in organic production visit the OMRI products list.

To be continued…