Beware! Your food may contain pesticides that could be harmful to your health.

Following the discovery of pesticides on a packet of lemons from one of our leading supermarkets, Havering Friends of the Earth Ian Pirie writes in the Havering Daily.

Pesticides are chemicals used to kill living things that can cause damage to crops – there are different pesticides for insects, mould or fungus, and weeds. Often crops will be treated with many different pesticides, and this is done many times during the year.

The trouble is, a lot of pesticides are also harmful to us. Some can cause cancer, others affect our organs and especially our reproductive systems. They also harm insects, bees, and other wildlife, and they may get into our drinking water. 

Of course, food crops are tested for safety, but most of the testing is on single pesticides. One piece of fruit, for example, may have residues of several pesticides, and of course as you eat different foods you could be taking in yet more pesticides! A cocktail in fact!

Over a third of all the fruit and vegetables tested by the UK government in 2017 and 2018 contained residues of more than one pesticide.

What can be done about this? For the consumer, the best advice is to get organic food as often as you can. You can also get information from an organisation called Pesticide Action network (PAN) – they have produced leaflets to help you avoid the foods with the most pesticide on them: https://www.pan-uk.org/dirty-dozen/

Other solutions depend on our farmers and our government. For farmers there are management schemes that help reduce the use of pesticides. Recently the European Union reduced the permitted level of one anti-fungal chemical, imazalil, by 500 times! Our government needs to follow suit and make sure that we are not subjected to dangerous levels of pesticide. 

Ian Pirie, Havering Friends of the Earth.