If you thought that buying organic fruits and vegetables was a waste of money, you might want to think again. Test results released by the FDA have shown the presence of a neurotoxic pesticide known as chlorpyrifos in samples taken from more than 300 different foods.
This alarming data comes from a series of tests carried out from late 2014 to late 2015 by the FDA’s Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program, which tests thousands of foods both domestic and imported for pesticides each year. More than 50 different food crops were found to contain chlorpyrifos.
The FDA tested more than 5,500 human foods in total. Their testing is very comprehensive, and it even looks at some of the less popular varieties of produce not used in USDA tests. Overall, they found that around half of domestic foodand 43 percent of the food we import contained pesticide residues. This is a rise over the figures noted in 2010 and 2005.
Chlorpyrifos was the fourth most commonly detected pesticide of the 207 different pesticides detected in the foods. They found the dangerous substance on foods like limes, rice, and hot chili peppers that are regularly consumed by Americans and Mexicans, for example. EPA analysis has previously found that the average American consumes far more chlorpyrifos than the levels that are considered safe, and those who eat certain foods have a higher risk….. Read More
