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Breaking News: Organic Foods Defend Kids Against Pesticides

After only a few days of eating organic diets, the levels of certain pesticides in children's bodies drop to zero, according to a study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that appears in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (Volume 114, Number 2, February 2006.) When the children in the study resumed their conventional diets, the levels of pesticides in their systems immediately went up.

Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children's Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides
Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 114, Number 2, February 2006

Chensheng Lu(1), Kathryn Toepel(2), Rene Irish(2), Richard A. Fenske(2), Dana B. Barr(3), and Roberto Bravo(3)

(1)Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; (2)Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; (3)National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Abstract
We used a novel study design to measure dietary organophosphorus pesticide exposure in a group of 23 elementary school-age children through urinary biomonitoring. We substituted most of children's conventional diets with organic food items for 5 consecutive days and collected two spot daily urine samples, first-morning and before-bedtime voids, throughout the 15-day study period. We found that the median urinary concentrations of the specific metabolites for malathion and chlorpyrifos decreased to the nondetect levels immediately after the introduction of organic diets and remained nondetectable until the conventional diets were reintroduced. The median concentrations for other organophosphorus pesticide metabolites were also lower in the organic diet consumption days; however, the detection of those metabolites was not frequent enough to show any statistical significance. In conclusion, we were able to demonstrate that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposures to organophosphorus pesticides that are commonly used in agricultural production. We also concluded that these children were most likely exposed to these organophosphorus pesticides exclusively through their diet. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ a longitudinal design with a dietary intervention to assess children's exposure to pesticides. It provides new and persuasive evidence of the effectiveness of this intervention. Key words: children's pesticide exposure, chlorpyrifos, dietary pesticide exposure, malathion, organic diet, organophosphorus pesticides, urinary biomonitoring. Environ Health Perspect 114: 260-263 (2006). doi:10.1289/ehp.8418 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 1 September 2005]

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