Tropical fruits often contaminated by pesticides

17-Aug-2021 - Germany

Whether in cocktails, fruit salads or pure - exotic fruits are popular. But many tropical fruits from conventional cultivation are still contaminated by pesticides. This shows the result of a current random sample of the consumer programs "SUPER.MARKT" (rbb) and "MARKT" (WDR). For this purpose, fruit from South America was bought from discounters, supermarkets and organic food stores in Düsseldorf and Berlin.

Of 12 conventionally grown fruits in South America, such as limes, mangos, papayas or bananas, five samples contained individual pesticides and six fruits even several pesticides. One fairtrade lime, of all fruits, even contained six different active ingredients at once. Two fruits contained a pesticide that is not even permitted in the EU. Although none of the individual pesticide values in the conventionally produced fruit exceeded the maximum permitted values, toxicologist Dr. Hermann Kruse believes that this is no reason for reassurance. The interaction of different pesticides in the human organism has hardly been investigated: "It may well be that even very low concentrations have effects on the immune system, the nervous system or the thyroid gland or on other organs", Kruse told "Markt" and "SUPER.MARKT". The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, on the other hand, does not see any problems in multiple residues if the individual maximum values are not exceeded in each case.

WDR and RBB also had organic fruit tested: The laboratories commissioned found no pesticides in the six samples.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

https://www.yumda.com/en/news/1172356/tropical-fruits-often-contaminated-by-pesticides.html