Tejal Somvanshi
New research shows that eating organic food can quickly reduce the amount of pesticides in our bodies. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley tracked how changing diets affected sixteen people from four American families.
“When families switched to organic food, we saw immediate drops in pesticide levels,” says researcher Carly Hyland. Her team found that harmful chemicals decreased by as much as 95% after just six days of eating organic food.
The study measured chemicals from common farming pesticides – substances used to kill insects and weeds on crops. These chemicals often remain on fruits and vegetables when we eat them.
Each family in the study ate their regular store-bought food for six days, then switched to organic-only meals for another six days. The researchers collected morning urine samples to measure pesticide levels.
The results were clear: eating organic food sharply reduced exposure to farming chemicals. The biggest change came in levels of MDA, which shows exposure to malathion (a common bug-killer used on fruits and vegetables), which dropped by 95%. Another widely-used pesticide, measured through TCPy from chlorpyrifos exposure, fell by 61%.
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The study looked at both adults (ages 36-52) and children (ages 4-15) from different cities – Oakland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Baltimore. While both groups showed decreases in many pesticide levels after switching to organic food, some chemicals like certain pyrethroids didn’t decrease significantly in children.
Researcher Carly Hyland suggests that while buying all organic food isn’t possible for everyone, washing produce properly can help reduce pesticide exposure.
The research found fourteen different pesticides in participants during their regular diet. Almost all of these decreased significantly when they ate organic food. This included modern farming chemicals that hadn’t been studied much before.
While the study included just sixteen people, the researchers analyzed 158 urine samples total, giving strong evidence for their findings. The scientists carefully measured over forty common agricultural chemicals, providing a detailed picture of how food choices affect our daily exposure to farming pesticides.
