Watch Those Vegetables, Ma

By Anastasia Toufexis

For many parents, dinnertime is too often a series of exhausting skirmishes with small children who refuse to finish their spinach or salad. Invariably, the parental argument is: "Eat it. It's good for you." This week a new study charges that all too often what is on the plate or in the glass may not be good for you at all. In fact, reports the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group based in New York City, farm produce sold in U.S. supermarkets and greengroceries may contain so much pesticide that it poses a serious hazard to the health of the nation's 22 million preschoolers.

The study, titled "Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children's Food," examines recent federal data on the eating habits of infants and youngsters through age five, along with figures on the amount of pesticides in 27 different crops. The information is then used to assess the long-term risk of cancer and neurological problems in these children. Eight of the pesticides are believed to be human carcinogens; all are used on fruits and vegetables frequently consumed by children, including peas, carrots, fruit juices and applesauce. Among the key findings:

-- Youngsters receive four times as much exposure on average as adults to the eight carcinogenic pesticides evaluated. As many as 6,200 of today's preschoolers, the study predicts, may develop cancer sometime in their life as a result of pesticide-contaminated produce they consume as children.

-- Daminozide (trade name: Alar), a chemical that is used chiefly on red apples and that penetrates the fruit's skin, is the greatest cancer hazard. The NRDC predicts that daminozide use may cause one case of cancer for every 4,200 preschoolers. Though the percentage of children affected -- 0.024% -- is minute, the risk is 240 times the standard considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency -- one case of cancer per million.

-- Exposure to four carcinogenic fungicides, including Captan and Mancozeb, may lead to one case of cancer per 33,000 to 160,000 children, two to seven times the allowable risk.

-- At least 3 million youngsters are exposed to unsafe levels of organophosphate insecticides that may cause neurological damage. Among the crops treated by these chemicals are tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers.

The NRDC report goes on to charge that the Government is failing to protect youngsters adequately from such dangers. It points out that current legal limits for pesticide residues, set by the EPA, are based on the consumption patterns and physiology of adults. Children eat a great deal more food for their body weight than adults. They also consume more fruit, which makes up an estimated 34% of preschoolers' diets, in contrast to 20% for adults'. Youngsters eat six times as many grapes, seven times as many apples and seven times as much applesauce as their parents. The typical preschooler drinks 18 times as much apple juice as the average woman. Thus the child's ingestion of pesticides is likely to be greater.

Children may also be more vulnerable than adults to pesticides because their bodies are still maturing. Cells are rapidly dividing, and organs, like the liver, may not be as efficient in removing toxic chemicals. "We must revise all existing tolerances and set the levels for children," says Janet Hathaway, the NRDC's chief lobbyist in Washington. "We should be able to eat food without worrying that we are sowing the seeds of cancer."

Not everyone believes that pesticides are as serious a threat as the NRDC claims. Professor Bruce Ames, head of the biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, labels the NRDC's alarms "wild." Says he: "They are piling one worst-case scenario on top of another." Moreover, Ames points out, plants produce their own poisons to ward off pests. "The proportion of positive cancer tests is about as high for natural pesticides as for synthetic pesticides, and we are eating 10,000 times more of the natural ones," he notes. The NRDC insists that its risk estimates are conservative. They do not, for instance, take into account pesticides in milk or water.

Many agree with the NRDC's basic contention that pesticide-residue limits need to be tightened. Says Dr. Richard Jackson, a member of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which is examining this issue at the EPA's request: "The food tolerances are set on good agricultural practices. The Government does not adequately address the impact of pesticides on children." The baby-food companies have already got the message. Gerber and Beech-Nut, for example, do not use Alar-treated apples in their products, and pesticide residues on the crops they accept for processing into baby foods are much lower than federal limits.

Under mounting pressure, the EPA has begun to take action. Last month the agency announced its intention to ban the use of daminozide by next winter and said that it was barring use of the fungicide captan on 42 crops. Some find the Government's response too slow. California's Democratic Representative Henry Waxman and Massachusetts' Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy plan to introduce federal legislation that would force the EPA to act quickly to remove dangerous pesticides from the food supply.

In the meantime, what is a worried parent to do? Jackson counsels caution but still recommends that children get a steady diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, organically grown if possible. And he warns people not to let their fears push them into food foolishness. "I wouldn't want parents to go back to Big Macs," he says, "because they're concerned about the broccoli."

With reporting by Cristina Garcia/Los Angeles