AU: Pesticide residue report not cause for health safety concern: department of health
ABC Rural: A report on the management of pesticides in Western Australia has found residue on fruit and vegetables grown locally is more than ten times the national average.
An Auditor-General’s report has found residues exceeded acceptable levels on 11 per cent of some WA-grown produce lines tested in some years. The national average is 1 per cent.
“The safety numbers that they are talking about are not an immediate public health safety issue,” said Jim Dodds, environmental health director at the WA Health Department.
He explained that the 11 per cent figure was skewed because the WA survey targeted “high risk” foods.
“We’ve gone in and sampled a totally different group of foods that we knew would have a higher risk of having pesticides on them, so it’s a totally different group so we could help agricultural businesses to get better use of pesticides on their farm.”