Should You Panic If It's Not Organic?

Photo: Ken McCown

It's not like you hit the grocery store thinking: mmm, what kind of yummy pesticides do I want on my produce today? If you're like me, you might actually prefer to fill your cart with wholesome, natural, organic fruits and vegetables. You want those fruits and veggies to be ripe, unwilted, locally grown, in-season, not full of bugs and worms, untainted by salmonella or e coli, and reasonably priced. Oh, and you'd like Alice Waters or Jamie Oliver to stop by your house and cook it all up for you, while you have a cocktail or two with your bff's Rachel Maddow, Ricky Gervais, Ellen Degeneris, John Stewart, Emma Thompson, George Clooney, and Michelle Obama.

Make Mine a Double, Willya Crabby? Been a Tough Week.

Okay, I'll admit, we're talking pure fantasy... that part about the reasonably priced organic produce.

So let's say, hypothetically, that there may be a few fruits and vegetables that have made their way into your kitchen that are not organic. Even worse, what if some of these items appear on the Environmental Working Group's dreaded list of most pesticide-laden produce, dubbed "The Dirty Dozen?"


How big a deal is it?  Well, I was just alerted to a study that may have some relevance.

Pesticide Researchers say: Screw Organic, the Regular Stuff is Just Fine!

A study of dietary exposure to pesticide residue in the Journal of Toxicology took aim at the EWG's Dirty Dozen list, criticizing their methodology and disputing their findings.


The researchers concluded that:

(1) Exposures to the pesticides on the "Dirty Dozen" list posed negligible risks to consumers; (2) eating organic versions of the "Dirty Dozen" didn't appreciably reduce risk; and (3) the methodology used by the EWG lacked scientific credibility.

For example, the study said that exposure to the pesticides on apples, which were number one on the 2011 Dirty Dozen list, were "well below levels of toxicological concern, with relative exposures between 20,000 and 28 million times lower than levels that do not harm laboratory animals." Even better, for 3 others of the tainted twelve, blueberries, cherries, and kale – the pesticide exposure was over 30 million times lower than those that cause no observable adverse effects in lab animals. (Bell peppers, on the other hand, were the worst at 49.5 times lower).

But Wait Crabby, Where Did You Find This Study?

Why in an email sent from the completely unbiased source, the "Let's Convince Folks That Processed Food and Agribusiness are Totally Awesome So We Can All Make A Crapload of Money Council" the International Food Information Council! How do we know we can trust them? Well, another conveniently highlighted newsletter article was entitled: "Is Industry Funded Research Trustworthy?" And while the article doesn't actually ever answer that question, by mentioning it in an article title you can be reassured that they're all over it! So no worries.

Shouldn't I Trust The Environmental Working Group More than Food Industry Apologists?

Hell, I don't know; they both have their own axes to grind. The EWG are the same folks who think the sunscreen my dermatologist urges me to use will poison me, and listening to them is always depressing. I'd prefer they be wrong, so I can go about my business like ordinary Americans, cheerfully oblivious to all the environmental dangers that may surround me.

Problem is, I'm not an scientist, so when advocacy agendas clash and both sides cite scientific research, I need actual experts to weigh in. Anyone got one handy? There were things about the Toxicology Journal article that sounded vaguely suspicious to me, like using a "probabilistic modeling approach to estimate exposures." Or this sentence: "Residue findings considered as nondetections were assigned a value of zero...rather than using the much more conservative approach of considering nondetectable residues as being to one-half of the detection limits." But again--what the heck do I know?

So Are You Going To Start Buying A Lot More Produce That's Treated with Pesticides?

No way! Not only because I don't want ANY pesticides if I can avoid them, but because I want to support the stores and suppliers that don't use them. Perhaps if there was more of a market, prices would go down! But I think when organic isn't available, and I'm contemplating a tasty looking carton of fresh ripe conventionally grown blueberries, they have a much better chance of ending up in my grocery cart after reading the above toxicology study, even if I don't entirely understand it.

What about you guys--do you try to buy organic when you can? Or the heck with that, who would you invite to your celebrity BFF cocktail party?

Fun in the Sun?

[By Crabby]

I hate sunscreen. Anyone else?

I hate the sticky ickyness of it. I hate when it runs in my eyes. I always get too much of it on my clothes, and not enough of it on my skin. I hate having to put it on for a morning run, then, after showering, having to put it on all over again.

Of course there's been some research about the anti-cancer properties of Vitamin D, and some folks are recommending a little bit of sun exposure without sunscreen. But no one seems to be saying this is license to skip the sunscreen entirely.

Nope, Not A Smart Move
(Photo credit: genosfear)

Does anyone else old enough to remember "tanning," as an intentional activity, guilt free? It made going to the beach and taking a nap feel like an accomplishment! You got "credit" for flopping down on a towel in the sand and absorbing rays, because you were improving your appearance which would make you more popular. How cool was that?

Sigh.

Then we found out we weren't supposed to tan on purpose.

I know some people still do. If you are one of those people who goes without sunscreen or burns your skin on purpose, can I pass on a message from a good friend of mine who did that too when she was younger? She has melanoma now. She says: "Don't."

Off course we keep hearing that theoretically there is a pill on the way, but I've been hearing this for ages now. Could we hurry up with the sunscreen pills, please scientists? That and the jet-packs we were all supposed to be flying around in by now?

Like many people, I make myself wear the sunscreen even though I hate it. The brand I use is supposed to quite effective. I use a spray version for my legs 'cause I'm lazy, and a lotion for the rest of me that tries to be somewhat less oily and gooky. At least it calls itself "dry touch." Still feels slimy to me, but somewhat less so than the others.



This is a popular and well-reviewed sunscreen. I won't chase down all the links, but part of the reason I've come to use it is that health magazines and dermatologists seem to recommend it pretty often. For example, in this compilation of product review sources, my brand comes in at #1.

But according to the Environmental Working Group, which has put together a database of cosmetic ingredients and their safety, I might as well be smearing rat poison all over me instead.

They say my sunscreen is NOT recommended because it contains ingredients linked to:

• Cancer
• Developmental/reproductive toxicity
• Allergies/immunotoxicity
• Neurotoxicity
• Endocrine disruption
• Persistence and bioaccumulation
• Organ system toxicity
• A few minor things like skin irritation, and
  
• Biochemical or cellular level changes.

That is a scary list.

How seriously should I take this, does anyone know? Is the Environmental Working Group mainly an advocacy group, or is it a bunch of serious, well-respected scientists that we should be paying way more attention to?

Because, damn, it they're right, I should probably switch from my easily available, everybody-recommends-it brand of sunscreen to one of the obscure brands that makes their "safe and effective" list. Even though my local drugstores don't stock them and they're probably slimy.

Here's where my distrust of advocacy groups and "stuff you read on the internet" collides with a similar distrust of our governmental regulatory process. The quaint notion I used to have that "if something were really dangerous they wouldn't let companies just sell it in the stores" has, alas, been tested too often. Now I believe: hell yeah, they will, if it's good for business.

So throw in some anxiety, wishful thinking, laziness, and frustration, and you end up with me not knowing What The Hell to Think.

If anyone has any thoughts or info on this, please help!