Impact of pesticide residue hard to track, experts say
Pesticides have been linked to Parkinson’s disease, declines in cognitive performance, developmental disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children. Their application has also been tied to environmental issues, such as the collapse of honeybee colonies and the development of resistant pests and weeds. But we know surprisingly little about population-wide health effects of the low doses that are in the foods we eat every day, panelists at the Harvard School of Public Health said Thursday. “We can’t tell for sure if you eat a bowl of salad today for lunch if it will lead to cancer in 10 to 20 years,” said Chensheng Lu, an associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Lu, whose recent research has tracked the mysterious collapse of honeybee colonies to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, said that broad studies on the effects of pesticide residue in foods are difficult to do. Funding...