M8.3: Blog Pesticides

Last night, I had pork, tomatoes, and eggs as the main ingredients to my dinner. After looking at the website, I found that all three foods which were not organic could have pesticide residues that can cause human health effects including known carcinogens and suspected hormone disruptors. In addition, all three foods are found to have pesticide that are harmful to the honeybees. I think it’s upsetting and unfortunate to because these days as a consumer, if you’re not buying organic food, it’s normal that you would have a higher chance to be exposed to these toxic pesticide residues. Also, you don’t have access to complete information on whether or not the farmer has used any pesticide on for this one tomatoes you’re thinking of buying and if the farmer did, which kind of pesticide did he use. From a public health perspective, we need to look at what Europe has been doing on regulating and banning harmful pesticide and the maximum residues levels of pesticide on produce. We need to reevaluate the substances being used in pesticides to determine the level of toxicity in order to ban those that go over the safety level. The least we can do is make transparent the pesticides that was used on the produce available at markets in order to raise awareness. While doing that, we also need to take into account how harmful these pesticides are for the bees because bees are our allies and we need to protect them as well.