Pesticide residues in conventional, IPM-grown and organic foods: Insights from three U.S. data sets.

Summary

Reducing dietary exposure to pesticide residues is an important goal of public health and environmental officials, farmers and other segments of the food industry, and consumers. Organic agriculture, with its strictures against the use of synthetic chemical inputs, seems to offer a low-residue alternative to conventionally-grown produce; avoiding exposure to pesticides is one major reason consumers buy organic foods. Foods sold with claims of reduced pesticide use or use of integrated pest management (IPM), sometimes certified as containing no detectable residues (NDR), are now on the market as well. In general, the effects of different agricultural production systems on dietary exposure to pesticides is a question of considerable interest to scientists, regulators and the public.
Surprisingly, few empirical analyses of residue data have addressed this question, mostly because of a dearth of data on residues in organic produce. In the absence of better data, public controversy has swirled about this issue, with
conservative media commentators and critics of organic agriculture going so far as to suggest that foods grown organically have just as many pesticide residues as conventionally grown foods.
Sufficient good data now exist to resolve the issue empirically. The authors obtained data on pesticide residues in organically grown foods, foods produced with IPM/NDR systems, and foods with no market claim (assumed to be conventionally grown) from three independent sources representing tests of over 94,000 food samples, and carried out statistical analyses of residue patterns.