REDUCING PESTICIDE RISKS TO US FOOD CONSUMERS - CAN AGRICULTURAL-RESEARCH HELP

Recent pesticide policy initiatives focus on reducing risks through ag ricultural research on pest control alternatives, This paper illustrat es how research resources could be targeted to reduce risks to food co nsumers from dietary pesticide residue intake, For 50 chemicals on 10 fruits and vegetables, we estimate consumers' dietary intake of pestic ides and use those estimates to develop risk indicators, expressing di etary intake as a percentage of safe levels, These indicators show tha t risks are higher for small children, The indicators allow us to rank pesticides according to their contribution to risk for this vulnerabl e sub-population, We then trace these risks to four sources: on farm p esticide use, post-harvest pesticide use, pesticides used on imported foods, and canceled pesticides that persist in the environment, For pe sticides that are used mainly on-farm, we show that the development of alternatives for risk reduction could be targeted to particular regio ns and crops, However, research to develop on-farm pest control altern atives will not address all of the sources of pesticide residues in th e diet, (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.