Organophosphate Pesticides

NEXT time you tuck into a slice of bread or a bowl of breakfast cereal, you may be swallowing more than you bargained for. Increasing problems with resistance to ("registered") pesticides (POISONS) mean that beetles and mites are contaminating an ever-larger proportion of cereal-based foods.  ...the problem is escalating because of resistance to ("registered") pirimithos-methyl and other organophosphate pesticides (POISONS).

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Subject:   What's that in my sandwich?--------
Date:         Tue, 01 Feb 2000 08:38:13 -0500
From:        Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
          State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
          Integrated Pest Management

Dear Lyndon,  I thought you might be interested in an article From New Scientist, November 28, 1998 by Oliver Tickell, who wrote:

NEXT time you tuck into a slice of bread or a bowl of breakfast cereal, you may be swallowing more than you bargained for. Increasing problems with resistance to ("registered") pesticides (POISONS) mean that beetles and mites are contaminating an ever-larger proportion of cereal-based foods.

The problem was highlighted at the British Crop Protection Conference in Brighton last week by Ken Wildey of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's Central Science Laboratory in York. Wildey's team studied grain from 279 commercial stores. Eighty-one per cent of the grain stores contained mites and 27 per cent contained beetles. The researchers have also studied 567 cereal-based food products, including flour, bread, breakfast cereals and biscuits. Of these foods, 21 per cent contained mites, which came from a total of 24 species.

The technique used to sample the mites from food kills the creatures, so the researchers don't know which of the foods contained living mites. But even dead mites can trigger allergic reactions in sensitized people, if there are enough of them. One product--a dried rusk baby food--contained 20 000 mites per kilogram.

Wildey believes the problem is escalating because of resistance to ("registered") pirimithos-methyl and other organophosphate pesticides (POISONS). A quarter of the populations of sawtoothed grain beetles (Oryzaephilus surinamensis) isolated from grain stores showed some resistance to organophosphates. And 71 per cent of populations of Acarus siro, the most common mite in grain stores, survived 14 days of exposure to ("registered") pirimithos-methyl at twice the recommended (POISON) dose. Every single population of another species, Tyrophagus putrescentiae, was similarly resistant. "We have also found cross- resistance, with a number of mite strains resistant to all approved grain protectants ("registered" POISONS)," says Wildey. "This may well result in a higher risk of contamination of foodstuffs by mites."

Wildey fears a "total breakdown of chemical control options". But ("registered") pesticides (POISONS) aren't the only option. Mites die if the moisture content of grain falls below 15 per cent, and most beetles are unable to breed below 15 °C. Adjusting the conditions under which grain is stored and reducing treatment with ("registered") organophosphates would also reduce consumers' exposure to pesticide (POISON) residues (CONTAMINATION) in food.

But 90 per cent of commercial grain stores in Britain rely on  ("registered") organophosphates (POISONS). Peter Beaumont, director of the Pesticides Trust in London, argues that the government's Advisory Committee on Pesticides should revoke licenses allowing grain stores to use (USELESS) organophosphate (POISONS).

The real problem may lie elsewhere, however. Robin Appel, who runs a grain store that doesn't use organophosphates in Waltham Chase, Hampshire, says that farmers routinely treat grain with the ("registered") pesticides (POISONS). "Farmers think they have got mites contained but they are actually feeding live mites into the human food chain," he says. "What they have to do is cool and dry their grain much more rapidly."

Well Lyndon, obviously to simply cool the grain to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (or less) and/or to simply reduce the moisture content to 15% or less would be "illegal" in good old California, because it is just one of those safe and far more effective unregistered alternatives.  When will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to use common sense rather than dangerous and useless "registered" POISONS in California?

Respectfully,  Stephen L. Tvedten.
 

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