EWG « Biofortified

The sister scare to GMO-phobia — Chemophobia — seen as a business proposition

by David Tribe on 24 August 2010

Finally, I Have Worked Out What The Story of Cosmetics is Really About | Personal Care

Finally, I Have Worked Out What The Story of Cosmetics is Really About

August 24th, 2010 . 1 Comment »

Since I was a teenager in the Seventies, I’ve always regarded myself as a pretty green. Green in the environmental sense that is. I remember the campaign to get lead out of petrol with affection. I studied Environmental Science at university and can remember talking long into the night about issues affecting the planet. I think I even joined the Ecology Party, the forerunner of the Green Party when I was about 18 – though I don’t remember doing anything other than pay the subscription.
Jobs were short when I graduated and I got a job formulating cosmetics rather than doing the environmental work I had originally had in mind. I was surprised to find myself in an industry where people seemed pretty positive about issues close to my heart. Biodegradable surfactants were a new thing but there was never any question of using anything else. I have spoken on other blogs about the fact that formaldehyde was still in use then, but was being removed purely at the initiative of the chemists in the labs.

This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.

Produce Pesticide Rankings

by Anastasia on 5 August 2010

My post Details on the Dirty Dozen on EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides™ led me to dive into the 2008 USDA data to see just how contaminated (or not) our produce really is. There’s so much information that it’s a little difficult to work with, but with perseverance and the right software (JMP is the best!*), I was able to re-do the EWG analysis but with the newest available data.

Below you can find my results with a through explanation of what I’ve done and why. The results are posted without all the commentary at Produce Pesticide Rankings which has all of the results and Pesticide Produce Rankings Tables which has comparisons of my results to the EWG results. You can download the original USDA data yourself or check out the Latest PDP Findings of Interest to Consumers.

Details on the Dirty Dozen

by Anastasia on 30 July 2010

As you may already know, the Environmental Working Group is a 501(c)(3) NGO with the goal of protecting “kids from toxic chemicals in our food, water, air and the products we use every day”. One of their major efforts is the yearly Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides™.

EWG gives many many reasons why they think you should use the guide, specifying that you (the consumer) should eat organic or at least choose the Clean 15™ over the Dirty Dozen™:

The 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables (the “Dirty Dozen”) are contaminated with an average of 10 different pesticides, with many tainting more than one type of produce. In contrast, the “Clean 15,” the 15 least contaminated fruits and vegetables, contain an average of less than 2. Eating organic food lowers pesticide body burdens as well. Research shows that concentrations of pesticides in children’s bodies peak during seasons that they eat the most produce, but fall to below detectable levels in just 5 days when they eat organic food.

The list of reasons has a lot of scary facts about how many pesticides detected on food, just how “polluted” our bodies are from the things we eat, and explains how our government barely regulates pesticides. Near the bottom, EWG lets us know that despite the scary facts that the need to eat fresh produce outweighs any risk from pesticide residues. They also remind consumers of the importance of eating fresh produce on their FAQ page. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if anyone gets to that part, considering that media coverage of the Shopper’s Guide rarely mentions it, instead focusing on the scary facts (as in ‘Dirty dozen’ produce carries more pesticide residue, group says on CNN Health, which dismisses the silly government for thinking that small amounts of pesticides won’t hurt us).

The truth is, pesticides are scary. As EWG’s Amy Rosenthal says, “Pesticides are designed to kill things.”

The devil, as always, is in the details.