Review

Unhappy eater

PESTICIDES AND YOUR FOOD: HOW TO REDUCE THE RISKS TO YOUR HEALTH
Andrew Watterson
Greenprint, 1991, £7.99

This book is a ready reference guide for food and pesticides and alerts people to the potential dangers of ignorance and uncertainty about their long-term use.

Although the scientific objectivity of the book can be questioned, the author states his own position and hence that of the book on the first page and the contents can be assessed on that basis.

The position in the preface is that large quantities of unnecessary agro-chemicals are used, that we do not know their long-term consequences for health and the environment and that many are difficult to detect and measure. To state that all pesticides should be fully discussed and properly audited before use is open to interpretation from people who will never accept anything is safe until proved to be safe (impossible) and those who hold that a few animal tests will cover ‘the necessary’.

Nearly half the book is a guide to foods. An extensive range is listed and it would take a well-stocked supermarket to cover half of the foods mentioned. Foods are listed alphabetically and this section is easy to use. I found the average annual consumption of particular foods per person in the UK the most interesting information: 3.3 lbs of Brussel sprouts; 12oz of honey; 10lbs of oranges; 118lbs of potatoes, and 3.5lbs of rice.

For each food the book gives results of pesticide tests. Terms like representative sample, which exclude the size and origin of the sample are generally misleading and some of the sample sizes are meaninglessly small. We are left to trust the author’s interpretation of the findings. This may be accepted by people who are against all pesticides but is playing ‘fast and loose’ with the facts. At the end of each food, lists of ‘nasty’ and ‘possibly hazardous’ pesticides are given but this information, unless you are allergic to one of these chemicals, is effectively useless.

Part three is a series of short summaries of pesticides. I looked for substances I knew about. Alar was absent despite the recent publicity; DDT is now widely banned because of environmental concerns but at the time of introduction this chemical saved millions of lives from malaria and typhus. There is no mention of paraquat being inactivated (therefore altered) by soil contact.

The book is relatively expensive at £7.99 for what is little more than lists of foods and pesticides. People whose mission is the total removal of pesticides from the world will find renewed energy for their cause from this book. Others may become unnecessarily alarmed about all their food becoming contaminated. Overall, not enough information is given to those wishing to reduce the contamination of their food.