Vegetables contaminated with chemicals

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 hours ago, FredGallaher said:

I think the problem could be the differences between detectable levels and acceptable standards. With sensitive instruments you find a lot of things that may or may not be significant. It depends on the standards used. 

 

The Thai-PAN testing process and results are very clear about that. The "red" levels in their charts and percentages are those that exceed the regulatory levels, if any. The "yellow" levels and percentages in their charts shows the "detectable" but below regulatory limits, if any. (Quite a few of the various pesticides and other chemical residues they found in their testing have never been licensed for legal use in Thailand at all...)

 

The top two charts show their test results for veggies and fruits, respectively. The bottom two charts show their test results from the supermarkets, including Tesco, and the various fresh markets, respectively. There's lots of RED in those charts, including nearly half of all the items they tested from Tesco. Only Big C had a higher percentage of red test results among the supermarkets.

 

 

[Kenchamp]

8 hours ago, Karlo said:

 

 

Regarding the recent findings of chemical residues in some products, we are in the process of performing tests with our suppliers and growers to check against Thai PAN’s findings.

 

 

 

With kind regards

Customer Service

Tesco Lotus

 

Be really good if Tesco reveal the results of the tests. 

[Lacessit]

3 hours ago, FredGallaher said:

I think the problem could be the differences between detectable levels and acceptable standards. With sensitive instruments you find a lot of things that may or may not be significant. It depends on the standards used. 

Modern toxicology being what it is, the standard tends to follow the detection limit. Modern instruments have gone past parts per billion (ppb) to parts per trillion ( ppt ).

Standards for pesticide exposure in humans are a combination of guesswork, and extrapolation from other species, some of whom are exposed to doses far beyond what would be encountered in the real world. The only definitive health effects in humans are observed after the fact, and sometimes up to 30 years later.

The poster child for standard setting is dioxin, which is quite deadly at low levels to quite a few non-human species. AFAIK the only proven health effect in humans is chloracne, a skin condition. The precautionary principle well and truly applies in standards for dioxin exposure.

The other extremely difficult problem in toxicology is synergy. All standards for exposure are set in isolation, without consideration of what could happen with combinations of pesticides. A good example of this is asbestos exposure. If one is a smoker as well, the probabilities hit the roof.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

15 minutes ago, Kenchamp said:

Be really good if Tesco reveal the results of the tests. 

 Thai-PAN has been doing these tests and publicly releasing the results periodically for some years now, and a regular component of those has been the major supermarkets, including Tesco.

 

AFAIR, I've never heard any public response from Tesco in the past, at least, from any of Thai-PAN's prior findings.  It will be interesting to see if this year will be any different.

 

It's worth noting, AFAIK, Tesco is the only one of the five supermarket chains tested in the Thai-PAN report that has any element of foreign ownership. I believe all the others are entirely Thai owned.

 

After one of the prior Thai-PAN reports, AFAIR, Tops-Central didn't make any direct response or comment on their fruits and vegetables having pesticide residues. But they did begin a big informational campaign in their stores and via their communications stressing all the checks and certifications that are supposed to ensure their fruits and veggies are clean. And of course, in the latest tests, they're not... But at least, their results were better this year than the other four.

 

The problem with such efforts is, among others, that the Thailand-based pesticide certifications and practically non-existent regulatory system aren't worth a dang, as the Thai-PAN report shows. And yet the local supermarkets continue to rely on those, only to be proven wrong again and again.

 

How do you provide clean fruits and vegetables in a country where mass agriculture is anything but clean?

 

 

Edited June 30, 2019 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[attrayant]

On 6/30/2019 at 9:56 AM, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

The Thai-PAN testing process and results are very clear about that. The "red" levels in their charts and percentages are those that exceed the regulatory levels, if any.

 

It's worth noting that regulatory levels are typically set many orders of magnitude below the lowest level at which an adverse effect has been detected.

 

Let's say that, for example, pesticide X has been confirmed to cause some detectable level of harm at a minimum concentration of 10 mg/kg.  This is called the "no observable adverse effect level", or NOAEL. Regulators will then set the maximum residue level one-one thousandth of the NOAEL to establish chronic toxicity, and call this the acceptable daily intake or ADI.  That means regulators don't want to see more than .01 mg/kg of residue (called the maximum residue level/limit, or MRL) for pesticide X.  

 

Then along comes an organization that is heavily funded by the Organic Consumer's Association.  They've apparently found levels of pesticide X at ten, twenty or even fifty times the MRL.  Oh noes, be alarmed!

 

No, stay calm.  Even at fifty or a hundred times over the maximum residue level, it's still WAY below the NOAEL which, if you recall, was set at 1/1000th of the level at which we might begin to see some adverse health effects.  Some people seem to think that as soon as the MRL is exceeded, people start dropping dead or start growing tumors.

 

Also remember that your body has a liver and kidneys which, if working properly, are constantly filtering this out of your system.  This is why we can take two acetaminophen tablets every four hours for a week, but if you take all those tablets at once you'll probably wake up dead.  The principle tenet of toxicology applies: the dose makes the poison.

 

Humans have adapted to a world where all kinds of plants have built-in pesticides, so our bodies have adapted alongside and become very good at getting rid of things that shouldn't be there.  Potatoes have all-natural solanine, cacao beans contain theobromine, some foods contain caffeine and some veggies contain a cocktail of alkaloids that are toxic to humans in sufficient dosage.  Mother nature perfected chemical warfare long before humans did.  From the American Council on Science and Health: 99.99% Of Pesticides We Eat Are Produced By Plants Themselves:

 

According to Dr. Ames’s team, every plant produces roughly a few dozen toxins, some of which (at a high enough dose) would be toxic to humans. Cabbage produces at least 49 known pesticides. Given the ubiquity of natural pesticides, Dr. Ames estimates that “Americans eat about 1.5 g of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than they eat of synthetic pesticide residues.”

 

Furthermore, Dr. Ames estimates that we consume 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides every day, many of which cause cancer when tested in lab animals. 

 

One of the points made by this article is that our concern is often seriously misplaced, thanks in this case to an activist anti-pesticide group that is bent on the total elimination of all pesticides.  People lose sleep over 20 parts per billion (0.000002%) of copper sulfate (used as a pesticide on grapes) in their wine, while ignoring the fact that they are gulping down 130 million parts per billion (13%) of an actual proven class-1 carcinogen (ethanol).

 

Having said all that, I do agree that the safety of our food supply is so important that we need to be constantly checking for contaminants like pesticides and pathogens like listeria & salmonella.  I'd like to have more faith in government regulators to report detailed findings, but I'm not sure how misplaced that faith would be in Thailand since pesticide applicators don't need to be licensed and may have little or no useful knowledge about the levels of chemical inputs on their farm.

 

What you should NOT do is reduce your intake of fruits and veggies out of misplaced fear of scary-sounding chemicals.  Taking produce out of your diet will surely increase your health risks more than consuming a few micrograms of any pesticide could.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 minute ago, attrayant said:

What you should NOT do is reduce your intake of fruits and veggies out of misplaced fear of scary-sounding chemicals.  Taking produce out of your diet will surely increase your health risks more than consuming a few micrograms of any pesticide could.

 

Based on Thai-PAN's repeated surveys, there are certain veggies here that have bigger problems with pesticide contamination than others....meaning, higher levels exceeding regulatory standards.

 

So, my preference is to use Thai-PAN's findings to try to avoid or minimize the consumption of those particular high pesticide residue level veggies, and continue using or substitute to using other veggies either local or imported that don't have the same pesticide contamination issues.

 

[attrayant]

I would no sooner trust PAN (in any country) to report about pesticides than I would trust PETA to accurately report on farm animal welfare or Andrew Wakefield to give us medically correct information about vaccines.  There is too much potential for conflict of interest.  PAN is heavily funded by the Organic Consumer's Association, which stands to benefit financially if it can convince more people to switch over to so-called "organic" produce. 

 

I've been through all this before with the Environmental Working Group and their ridiculous annual "dirty dozen" list.  Yes, a select few samples had residue traces over the MRL, but still well within the ADI.  And to actually reach the NOAEL and start to see health potential risks, you'd need to eat something like 15 thousand servings of strawberries a day.  It's utterly ridiculous to be concerned about such miniscule trace amounts; I don't care how much over the ADI they are.

 

I'd like to see the actual lab results, but PAN does not seem to have released them. Instead, they've "interpreted" them and provided their own analysis.  The one actual lab sample result they provided was for grapes which, as far as I can see, came out clean:

 

 

I would think that they would have shown a more worrying example if they really wanted to make their point.  The only good thing I can say about PAN is that their report may spur regulators into action.  However even if PAN's findings are correct, I am still not too concerned about such miniscule residue levels.  When residues start to approach or exceed the NOAEL... then I'll start to worry.

[GroupA]

Thanks. So they are not un-biased as some may claim.