How much pesticide residue remains on food?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determines the health risk of each pesticide that it approves for use, and sets limits called tolerances. A tolerance is defined as the maximum amount of a particular pesticide residue that is permitted to be in or on food. A tolerance is not an estimate of the pesticide residue that is common or typical for a food (see BCERF Fact Sheet #25 on Pesticide Residue Monitoring and Food Safety for more details). Under the Food Quality Protection Act, EPA estimates the exposure to a pesticide from different sources such as food, drinking water and home use. After taking these sources of exposure into consideration it estimates “with reasonable certainty, the level at which a pesticide residue, if it were to remain on food and is eaten, will cause no harm to the consumer.” – EPA (web site: www.epa.gov/opppsps1/fqpa). What about harmful breakdown products of pesticides? In some cases when a pesticide is known to have harmful breakdown products, a tolera
