HARMFUL PESTICIDES FOUND IN EVERYDAY FOOD PRODUCTS

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ANDREW SCHNEIDER, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER - Government promises to
rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren't doing
the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully
monitored the diets of a group of local children.

The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children
eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained
biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned
by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs
of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the
principal author of the study published online in the current issue of
Environmental Health Perspectives. "Once you switch from conventional
food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can
measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you
go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory
University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on
pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the
pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html?source=mypi

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