Is Organic Really Safer?
Our typical diet contains at least 10,000 times more "natural pesticides" than man-made pesticide residues, according to Dr. Bruce Ames, chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Ames’ research, published in SCIENCE Magazine, notes that nature’s pesticides are natural "toxic compounds" produced by most plants to protect themselves from insects and other pests - a sort of evolutionary chemical warfare.
Many of these tested natural compounds are either carcinogenic or mutagenic. "A single mushroom or cup of coffee has more carcinogens than all of the manmade pesticides you’re likely to get in a day," notes Dr. Ames.
This does not mean you need to throw out the mushrooms. While many natural carcinogens are present in greater amounts than synthetic pesticides, current scientific knowledge indicates that neither man-made nor natural food chemicals are hazardous in the quantities we consume in a typical diet.
Given all this, it’s strange that so much effort and money are spent to highly regulate or ban certain synthetic pesticides whose risks are not proven as compared to the background levels of naturally occurring proven carcinogens.
The federal government spends a billion dollars a year through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to detect very tiny doses of suspected carcinogens. This is as much as is spent for all the cancer research in this country. Shouldn’t these federal funds be put to better use?