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Most countries, including China, have rules on what pesticides can be used and the level of pesticide residues of certain chemicals on some fruits and vegetables.
But as Greenpeace China found out earlier this year many supermarkets and markets are selling fresh food with a cocktail of pesticides including some banned names.
The official term for how much pesticides can be left on a fruit or vegetable is called the Maximum Residue Level (MRL).
These numbers are arrived at by a number of different indicators including estimates how much a human can ingest of a certain chemical daily, how much can be safely consumed in a single meal, among other factors.
But many of these tests are based on toxic levels observed in laboratory animals and are thus debatable and based on assumptions not on facts.
In China, national MRLs have been set for some,
but not all,
pesticides/crop combinations.
So some highly toxic pesticides could be
used in vegetable cultivation without a specific MRL having been set for
residue detection.
Are MRLs Protective of Human Health?
What if someone eats a lot of one type of food?
Sometimes the MRL's are set way too high because industry has been successful in
lobbying for higher and less protective MRLs.
Greenpeace believes there is no safe level of pesticide.
Greenpeace China believes MRL's have serious shortcomings.
Pesticides are known to be harmful to health and MRL's are very difficult to enforce, particularly in China.
The answer is to stop using pesticides and encourage organic farming.
