PESTICIDES ON FOOD 'ALMOST NO' CANCER DANGER
ATLANTA (AP)
Pesticides left on fruits and vegetables are so negligible that they
pose almost no cancer danger, an expert panel said, concluding people
would be at greater risk for failing to eat their apples and greens.
Large and frequent doses of pesticides are believed to be toxic, but
most people are exposed to only tiny amounts in fruits and vegetables.
Motivated by public worries, a panel of cancer experts formed in 1994
and reviewed at least 50 published studies between 1981 and 1996 on
pesticides to find out if there was cause for alarm. "A diverse diet
that has plenty of fruits and vegetables is very important in reducing
cancer, " said Dr. Clark Heath of the American Cancer Society. "Compared
to that, the risk of cancer from manmade chemicals is negligible."
For the average person, there's nothing to fear, the panel said in a
study to be published Saturday in the journal Cancer.
"It is extremely unlikely that pesticides in the diet have any
meaningful contribution to cancer rates," stated Len Ritter, a Canadian
environmental biology professor on the panel and executive director of
the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres.
Tobacco use, blamed for one in five deaths in the United States, should
remain the priority in the fight against cancer, the panel said.
"For whatever reason,...people feel more concern for risks over which
they have no personal control than for risks associated with their
familiar everyday life habits," Heath wrote in an editorial.
-- "New Generation Cropping Systems": the cutting edge of sustainable agriculture http://www2.epix.net/~cmfarm/ Steve Groff Cedar Meadow Farm 679 Hilldale Rd Holtwood PA 17532 USA Ph. 717-284-5152To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with "unsubscribe sanet-mg". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest".