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An apple a day may poison children
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-04 14:20

Children who eat an apple or pear a day may be exceeding the pesticide safety threshold because of residues on the fruit, according to research.

Using data of the British Department of Environment on pesticides on fruit collected from supermarkets, scientists calculated that each day some children would get a toxic level of pesticides.

The research, published Sunday, says the government repeatedly claims that the levels of pesticide are safe because, instead of measuring individual apples, researchers buy 10, mash them and take an average reading to see if they are safe. This is the internationally agreed method of checking residues.

British Government figures show that the pesticide is not evenly spread across the batch, and one or two apples could contain 90% or more of the pesticide in the batch.

The research, published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, is from Andrew Watterson of Stirling University, and Vyvyan Howard of Liverpool University. It used mathematical modeling to measure exposure to pesticides for children aged between 18 months and four years old. The pesticides involved can disrupt children's hormones and some are suspected of causing cancer.

The study found that between 10 and 220 young children a day could be exposed to pesticide residues at levels which could pose immediate and long term threats to health.However, Ian Brown, chairman of the government's pesticides residue committee and a consultant toxicologist at Southampton University, said he was confident the maximum residue levels found in fruit tested would not harm a toddler. The safe level for humans was set 100 times lower than a level which had no observable effect on rats.



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