pesticides question

 hello

i was wondering about the answer to a question and i would like to hear
your opinion.


lets say that we have a vegetable that is sprayed with a pesticide.
the pesticide says that after 15 days it gets degraded to non toxic
elements.

i think that it is a common case among the various pesticides and
fungucides.

if i pick up a vegetable 2 days before the pesticide deadline finishes
and store it in a refigerator is the pesticide going to dissolve as if
the vegetable was on the plant?

the point of my question is that i do not know what exactly the term
degrade means for the various agro chemicals.

it could mean that it is unstable anyway and disolves by its own no
matter where the vegetable is stored

or it could mean that it is dissolved by some biological or physical
factors (e.g heat or some bacteria) etc

what is your opinion and practice about this?

thank you
--



  --------------------------------------------------------------
                    Nick Apostolakis
   e-mail: nickapos@agriroot.aua.gr nickapos@noc.uoa.gr
    Web Site: http://agriroot.aua.gr/~nickapos
  --------------------------------------------------------------

 
Well, it SAYS that.


It is a common CLAIM.


They vary.  In practice, the 15 days is not a hard deadline, but
when the concentration will have dropped to a 'safe' level.  Also,
the breakdown products are not always as harmless as is made out.
The conditions will make a considerable difference to the breakdown
rate, but what those conditions are I don't know (except that it
will vary, and often involves bacteria).

None of the pesticides that you can buy for domestic use are
seriously toxic to humans, nor are their breakdown products, so it
isn't a major matter.  But, if you are worried about such things,
use only genuinely harmless (to humans) pesticides.

Soft soap (or detergent) is one such, and pyrethrum is close.  It
is the best thing for aphids on beans, for example.  You can spray
the day you pick.  Simple copper salts are OK, too, provided that
you wash them off to ensure that you eat only a small amount (the
odd milligram at most).  Sulphur is safe, too.  And, though it is
not an approved pesticide, bleach is also safe.

In all cases, getting them in your eyes or in a concentrated form
on other mucous membranes or sensitive skin is a Bad Idea.  But
eating them diluted is not a problem.

Pete the Troll is probably inedible, anyway, so ignore him.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

Indeed. And many food plants contain a wide variety of natural pesticides
and hormone disruptors, selected over tens to hundreds of millions of years
of evolution to be harmful to insects *and* mammals at low doses,and which
testing has shown to be in many cases much more harmful than man-made
pesticides.  For example, the active compund in lettuce is an order of
magnitude or more,  carcinogenic than any pesticide allowed on the market
today.

So the factual answer to that above is, "you eat plants, you eat
pesticides". [Whether you spayed them or not].

--
Tumbleweed

Remove my socks for email address

 
True.  But which plants do YOU spay for eating? :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 On 3 Jun 2004 21:01:52 GMT, nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote:


Cat mint?