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This article is
a work in progress and as it is expanded, new text will temporarily
appear in black, until newer material is in turn incorporated. Please
be sure to check back for updates if you are interested in discovering
truth for yourself.
About the Author
Stuart has been
a holistic health researcher almost full-time since becoming a whole-food
vegetarian 30 years ago. Following insecticide poisoning whilst
living on a strict fruitarian diet on largely commercial fruit for
a mere year (organophosphates were at that time just beginning to
replace the organochlorines as insecticides in agriculture) he started
growing organic vegetables, herbs and fruits in earnest wherever
he could, including on the roof of his house.
Back in the early 80's
Stuart was a volunteer worker with Odyssey Magazine
and had his first article published in the Feb/March 1984 edition,
titled "Vitamin B12: the facts" (defending vegetarianism
against medical scare tactics propaganda), was a research associate
with Koeberg Alert, escaping to the Garden Route
just before the nuclear power-station became operational and PW
Botha's Military Police were forcing ex-servicemen to conduct township
raids. Stuart and his wife Lettie spent more than a decade living
off the land with milch goats, bees, organic fruits and vegetables
for food and harvesting and distributing herbs and especially herb
seeds for an income, out of which Rainbow Organics
was born at Rondevlei Herb Farm near the Wilderness, which they
successfully managed at that time in the late 80's.
Striving for a self-sufficient
lifestyle, Stuart eventually successfully grew all his family’s
food requirements to strict organic principles for over a decade,
which included collecting and growing toxic natural pesticidal and
volatile companion plants and eventually becoming the continent’s
expert on botanical pesticides (from plants) and formulating and
sharing his first all natural botanical pesticide with fellow enthusiasts
under the name of Bio-Bug-Go,
(click for an archived scan) which consisted of 3 botanicals: Rotenone,
Pyrethrum, Black Pepper; and Diatomite (sharp ancient algal exoskeletal
particles). During this time, Stuart was a dedicated environmental
activist, founding the Garden Route branch of Earthlife Africa.
Stuart had his work featured
in the in the first “Sunday Times Magazine Earth Day Feature”
(April 22, 1990) and
had his first Gaia Research Institute Report, titled: “Pesticide
Exposé: What You Don’t Know, Can Hurt You” published
in South Africa’s first dedicated environmental magazine,
“The Green Pages” (November
1990). Later, in 1996 Stuart founded PHARMAPACT, the
Peoples Health Alliance
Rejecting Medical Authoritarianism,
Prejudice And Conspiratorial
Tyranny to campaign against the Medicine Control
Council’s attempted declaration of natural health products
as regulated medicines. In 1998, Stuart submitted two reports, totalling
350 pages to the Minister of Health, in “Protest of Fluoridation
of Public Water Supplies” and in 1999 presented to the full
MCC, a 39-page “Traditional African Medicine Genocide”
report.
Founded in 1990,
the Gaia Research Institute became a formal focal point for Stuart’s
organic food growing research, with special emphasis on plant-based
pesticides, funded by the proceeds from his natural personal care
products trading as Rainbow Organics, which by 1997 had become a
formal closed corporation, Gaia Research, trading as Gaia Organics,
which name and logo has as its main strength, being synonymous with
unquestionable integrity. In an apparent paradox, that has been
difficult to communicate with gullible consumers who have been indoctrinated
with non-scientific new age mumbo jumbo, the concept that because
something is natural or organic, does not necessarily equate with
it being safe. A simple assessment of the natural kingdom, eg venoms,
pathogens and poisonous plants are undisputedly many magnitudes
more toxic than any man-made substance including those specifically
designed to kill, eg pesticides and warfare agents.
By 2001, Stuart had irreversibly realised that natural products
could be at least as, if not more toxic than synthetics and published,
in collaboration with University of Toronto BC researchers, his
first peer-reviewed paper, titled: "The Toxicity of Callilepsis
laureola, a South African traditional herbal medicine" (Popat
A et al, Clin Biochem, 34:229, 2001).
In 2002, Stuart published online, the first of a 5-part series titled:
“Sutherlandia: Healthy Herb or Potent(ial) Poison?”
and in 2006, two ongoing online reports: “Cancer Hazard of
Dermal Natural Progesterone”, and this current report. Ten
years of idealistic, esoteric and transpersonal studies, followed
by twenty years of intensive practical experience and self-funded
independent scientific research has permitted constant evolution
of Stuart’s world-view and allowed him to identify, indeed
often create, a middle way light path meandering between the extreme
polar paradigms that currently dominate as ‘us’ and
‘them’ dichotomies in agriculture, medicine, environmental
and other important human endeavours.
Introduction
The greatest fear of many conscientious natural foodists is that
pesticide residues in their food might cause harm or illness, especially
cancer. However, it is an esoteric fact that most of the toxic substances
in our diets originate naturally from food plants themselves (endogenously)
or are formed during the storage, processing and cooking thereof.
This phenomenon does not apply to fruits (the natural food of humans),
with exceptions from extreme environments that are unnatural habitats
for humans, hence the emphasis on vegetables, tubers, legumes and
grains in this analysis.
As fruits ripen to reproductive completion,
they, with exception of their seeds, relinquish all sense of self-preservation.
Vegetables however, only reach reproductive completion well past
their palatable and nutritional peak and their toxic defensive chemicals
are rendered inert only on decomposition of the plants themselves.
Man-made pesticides on the other hand, are designed to break down
to safe residues over specific withholding periods that the farmer
is obliged to observe and generally do judging by routine residue
analysis, hence concern over non-existent risk should be rationalised. |
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Small-Scale Family
Food Garden |
Medium-Scale Farm |
Large-Scale Farm |
The extent to which farmers comply with
international safety specifications regarding the selection,
timing and manner of application of synthetic pesticides, determines
the degree of relative risk or safety to both farm workers and
consumers on a continuum ranging from slight or occasional health
risk, to the complete absence of any measurable risk, which
continuum is equivalent to that of large-scale haphazard organic
farming, compared with knowledgeable and experienced hands-on
organic food gardening in the family vegetable patch, which
is the only safe scale for organics.
Without application of pesticides to modern crossbred varieties,
the larger the scale of a farming operation, the worse the manpower
to area ratio and the plant predation and infection rates and
the production of toxic defensive chemicals. Organics certainly
fare the worst. Knowledge of what produce is likely to have
pesticide residues (melons and whole-grains are the worst) and
washing produce with a dash of hydrogen peroxide in rinse water,
will go a long way to at the very least equalise, if not better
the safety profile of conventional compared with organic produce.
Fungal mycotoxins on untreated/illtreated grains can be more
toxic than any pesticide residues and are carcinogens, even
at miniscule levels.
One can furthermore substantially remove topical synthetic and
botanical pesticide residues by washing, even scrubbing some
produce, but just as one cannot remove residues of systemic
synthetics from cucurbits (pumpkin, squash & melon family),
which are best self-grown where possible if one is not in a
position to trust the farmer; so too, one cannot remove the
systemic defensive often radical toxins self-produced by insufficiently
protected plant produce challenged by predators and/or pathogenic
infections, which is why Commercial Organic Vegetables are Hazardous
to Your Health.
If you don’t understand/believe me, then read on for ‘the’
definitive treatise on the subject, a decade ahead of its time.
As the toxicity of the remaining few
older pesticides sees their continuing demise and the toxic
potential of modern alternatives decrease further and knowledge
of the ‘natural’ toxic potential of predation- and
infection-stressed commercially grown organic produce concurrently
increases, there ought to be a moderation of the current idiotic
and hyped trend towards organic food, medicinal and personal
care ingredient plants. Plants need little more than fertile
soil, sufficient water and a suitable climate to survive to
maturity. When an enterprise is commercial, the presence of
predacious and infectious pests assumes greater importance in
the modern conventional paradigm, which emphasises near prophylactic
avoidance of a build-up of pests to epidemic proportions and
near perfection of the cosmetic appearance of produce. Whilst
this apparent obsession is criticised by the organic faction,
the conventional paradigm does have the distinct advantage of
limiting concentrations of persistent endogenous defensive toxins
that render the produce of the organic faction far inferior
from a food safety perspective. I refer to organics as a faction,
since it is this grouping that publicly holds itself as apart
from and superior to the majority of this sector.
The conventional paradigm is historically
vigorously and openly self-critical, the organic faction not,
with the result that the former is constantly in a state of
reform towards higher integrity, whereas the latter, believing
itself perfect, sadly, indeed dangerously from a consumer standpoint,
is incapable of enlightenment and hence of increasing its integrity
and as such is unable to meet the overly optimistic expectations
of consumers from a health and safety perspective. Plants that
have to constantly defend themselves via the production of their
own defensive toxins logically have to draw on their nutritional
reserves to produce these chemicals, rendering ludicrous common
claims of broad nutritional superiority. The price-differential
renders automatically any occasional minor nutritional advantages
totally irrelevant. Organic Standards are philosophical, rather
than science-based and are but a joke to those who know better.
Neither paradigm is perfect and what is needed is a merging
of dichotomies via a middle way, an integrative agronomy akin
to what is already underway in medicine and did start somewhat
earlier, but is more slowly catching on in agriculture, which
wholistic approach will better serve humankind as a whole. This
article is my contribution to this enlightened end.
The variety of chemicals
that humans encounter is theoretically infinite if no limit is
set on the molecular size of chemicals. In practice, however,
chemists tend to produce synthetic chemicals or analyze natural
chemicals that are between a molecular weight of a few hundred
to a few thousand. Millions of synthetic chemicals are registered
with the American Chemical Society, but fewer than 100,000 are
currently in commercial or industrial use and, therefore, available
for introduction into the environment
(US Environmental Protection Agency, 40 CFR Part 799. Fed Regist
62(158):43820-438649 EPA, 1997). Approximately
600 different pesticide chemicals are in use
(Pimentel D, ‘Pest Management In Agriculture’, In
D Pimentel, (Ed), Techniques for Reducing Pesticides, John Wiley
& Sons, 1996).
A much larger number of
natural chemicals, about 6 million, exist by the above molecular
size criteria. The total number of plant chemicals exceeds 400,000
(Keelerm R & A Tu, “Toxicology
of Plant and Fungal Compounds”, Handbook of Natural Toxins,
Vol 6, M Dekker, NY, 1991); (Harborne J & H. Baxter, Dictionary
of Plant Toxins, Wiley, NY, 1996). Of these, tens
of thousands of secondary metabolites have been identified and
hundreds of thousands exist, whose major roles in the plants are
defensive (Swain T, Annu Rev Plant
Physiol, 28, 479–501, 1977); (Duke S, ‘Natural Pesticides
From Plants’, in J Janick & J Simon (Eds), Advances
in New Crops. Timber Press, Portland, OR, 1990). Naturally
occurring substances sometimes have significant toxic properties
(National Research Council, Carcinogens
and Anti-carcinogens in the Human Diet, National Research Council,
Wash, DC, Natl Acad Press, 1996). Plants
raised for pest resistance and grown without artificial pesticides
may produce high levels of natural toxins that pose risk to consumers
(Jim Kirkland, Nutr 4510, Toxicology, Nutrition & Food, Dept
Human Health & Nutrition al Sciences, University of Guelph,
Ontario, Canada, Fall, 2005).
Organically
grown plants may each produce a minimum of 50 such natural pesticides.
Prof Bruce Ames is quoted as saying that the average person consumes
1500mg of pesticides a day, of which 1499.91mg are endogenous
toxins, the remaining 0.09mg being synthetic pesticides applied
to the produce by the farmer. Indeed, selective-breeding of conventional,
as opposed to organic produce has favoured plants that synthesise
the least and the most endogenous toxins respectively. Organic
systems provide increased opportunities for insect attack and
chemical defense. All plants,
but especially those with abundant foliage, produce endogenous
toxins in defence against attack by insects and their larvae.
Organic vegetables are subject to much more insect attack than
and hence have concentrations of these toxins considerably higher
than in those vegetables treated with exogenous pesticides.
(Graham I, “Endogenous Toxins
of Plants”, The Thought Field, 10(1), 2004); (Young J et
al, Mol Nutr Food Res, 49(12), 2005)
Based upon the US National Toxicology
Program rodent carcinogenicity database, researchers predict that
a large proportion of natural
pesticides present in edible plants are likely to be rodent carcinogens
(Rosenkranz H, Klopman G, Carcinogenesis,
11: 349-353, 1990). An investigation of xenobiotics
by analysis of 10,000 chemicals, both synthetic and natural, has
revealed an association
between resistance to biological degradation and the prevalence
of chemicals with the potential to induce systemic toxicity and
cancer (Pollack N et al,
Mutat Res, 528(1-2), 2003), the implication being
that natural pesticides are more likely to cause more poisoning
and malignancies than exogenous classes.
In scientific terms, toxins are biogenic
non-replicating natural substances that cover an immense range
of compounds that act in many different ways on many different
important body processes, specifically enzymes, cell membrane
structures, ion-channels, receptors, ribosomal proteins, etc,
to induce a vast array of lethal and non-lethal toxic effects.
Research in natural toxins is a new subject, toxinology, constituting
a military risk threat, since these exhibit higher toxicity than
classic synthetic warfare nerve agents, some natural toxins being
even 1,000,000 times more toxic than synthetic nerve agents. All
of the known most potent toxic substances - with mammalian toxicity
higher than 0.1 µg/kg - are in fact, the natural toxins
(Chen Ji-sheng, Assessment of
Toxins, Research Institute of Chemical Defense, Beijing, China,
2004). Ricin is a naturally occurring toxin derived
from the beans of the castor oil plant Ricinus communis, considered
a potential chemical weapon (Bradberry
S et al, Toxicol Rev, 22(1), 2003). The use of biological
agents as weapons of terror has now been realized. The new, emerging
threat agents are natural biotoxins produced by plants, fungi,
and bacteria. (Patocka J, Streda
L, Acta Medica, 49(1), 2006).
In addition to the long history of disease
and death from natural toxicants in plants, there
is a growing literature about the abundant levels and varieties
of natural toxicants in our foods, which natural chemicals cause
mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, neurotoxicity and
visceral organ toxicity in routine laboratory tests. There is
evidence that a large number of natural toxicants in our food
supply increase and decrease with higher and lower levels respectively
of plant stress from infection or predation. In addition, fungal
infections induce a chemical response from the plant, and also
excrete their own array of toxins, sometimes at high levels.
Crop protection chemicals reduce plant stress, yet there is no
pesticide risk management program that evaluates the risk versus
benefit equation to balance the risk from crop protection chemicals
(which are extensively tested and heavily regulated) against the
benefit of decreased risk from natural plant and fungal toxicants
(which are only sporadically tested and regulated). Inattention
to this phenomenon (eg in organic farming) may lead to an unintended
increase in exposure to this wide array of naturally occurring
chemicals (Mattsson J et al, Neurotoxicol,
21(1-2), 2000).
It can be confidently
stated that modern pesticide safety regulation as pioneered in
the USA and implemented by most countries, including South Africa,
can ensure that conventionally grown produce is as safe as commercial
organic produce from a consumer toxicity perspective. Under the
Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) must ensure that, before registering a new pesticide,
it can be used with a reasonable certainty of no harm to human
health and the environment. To determine its safety, more than
100 scientific studies and tests are required from the applicants,
from which the EPA sets (maximum residue) tolerance levels for
food. Several factors must be addressed before a level is can
be established, such as aggregate exposure, the cumulative effects
from pesticides with similar effects, increased susceptibilities
of certain populations, and endocrine disruptor effects. In this
way, in addition to environmental effects, long- and short- term
potential human risks are evaluated and if a pesticide is then
determined to be both safe and effective for proposed uses, it
is conditionally registered for limited use on specific crops,
which are routinely tested to verify compliance. The US National
Academy of Science has fully reviewed and endorsed the regulatory
process (Committee on the Review
of the Use of Scientific Criteria and Performance Standards for
Safe Food, Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food, National Research
Council, NAS, National Academies Press, 2003).
Limitations standing in
the way of complete certainty of safety of man-made pesticides
arise firstly as a result of 10 years of extensions of cutoff
dates in the US EPA Reregistration Process that is reviewing all
older pesticides according to modern criteria, whereby should
applicants fail to submit deficient safety data, existing registrations
are cancelled and the pesticides banned. Several older pesticide
registrations have already been either cancelled by authorities
or withdrawn by registration holders unable or unwilling to provide
the outstanding safety data to stringent priority schedules. Failure
to ensure optimal consumer safety also arises from conventional
farmers neglecting to observe strict obligatory withholding periods
between pesticide applications and harvest also and also failures
by domestic and local governments to monitor and prevent pesticide
application infringements from entering the food chain, but these
criticisms apply equally to organic produce, where several toxic
chemicals are permitted and inadequately regulated. I am certainly
not alone in this view. One researcher authored a 90-page report
titled “Natural Pesticides and Bioactive Compounds in
Foods” (Beier R, Rev
Environ Contam Toxicol, 113:47-137, 1990). which cited
1015 scientific references.
There is no reason why non-organic
produce, as with organic produce, should not be privately certifiable
as safe according to compliance with international criteria, since
even given the use of older pesticides, there remains far more
certainty of the safety of synthetic pesticides currently in use
than with organic practices, since even if no pesticides are applied,
the plants themselves will synthesise defensive chemicals against
hugely disproportionate predation and infection. Such endogenous
natural pesticides are totally unregulated, are not subject to
any withholding period – the toxic natural chemicals remain
active until the plant decomposes - and are known to be as toxic
to all life forms as are man-made pesticides. Approximately half
of such endogenous pesticidal secondary metabolites tested are
in fact carcinogenic in standard rodent tests, the same ratio
as man-made toxins, most of which are already prohibited, banned
or restricted, which is certainly not the case with endogenous
natural pesticides. Georges Werner, Research Director at the Institute
de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, France, has put it thus:
“Actually, there is no basic difference between ‘synthetic’
and ‘natural’ chemical substances; the latter may
be as toxic as the former” (Letter,
published in Time magazine, November 9, 1992).
Many synthetic organic
insecticides registered in the last decade have safer properties
and smaller environmental impacts than older synthetic organic
pesticides. One of the major benefits of pesticides is the protection
of yield, which could decrease by as much as 50%, particularly
of such perishable crops as fruits and vegetables (between 24
–57% depending on the crop species) because of insect and
disease damage, without crop-protection. Furthermore, about 50%
of the harvested crop, could be lost in transport and storage
because of insects and disease in the absence of pesticide use.
Moreover, pesticide use
can improve food quality in storage by reducing the incidence
of such fungal contaminants as aflatoxins, known liver carcinogens,
which are responsive to fungicides. (Oerke
E et al, Crop Production and Crop Protection: Estimated Losses
in Major Food and Cash Crops, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1994)
Health benefits of organic food over conventional food have not
even been conclusively proved scientifically (C
Winter, Food Safety Program, University of California, Davis,
personal communication, April 8,1998, referenced in: Committee
on the Future Role of Pesticides in US Agriculture, Board on Agriculture
and Natural Resources, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology,
National Research Council, 2000).
Among several plant defense proteins,
proteinase inhibitors are an important group that are known to
be inducible in plants by injuries, such as insect damage (Casaretto
J, Corcuera L, Biol Res, 28(4), 1995).
Protease inhibitor proteins are among the defensive chemicals
in plant tissues that affect growth and development of pests,
by attenuating enzyme function necessary for metabolic processes
such as protein turnover or proteolytic digestion required for
nutrient assimilation. The major digestive proteases utilised
by herbivorous pests are serine, cysteine and aspartyl proteases.
Inhibitors against all have been identified in plants and shown
to inhibit proteolytic activity and growth of pests. (Koiwa
H et al, “Regulation of Plant Defense Against Herbivorous
Pests”, in M Dominique (Ed), Recombinant Protease Inhibitors
in Plants, Landes/Eurekah Bioscience, 2000)
This, of course raises the question as to whether these protease
inhibitors present any health hazards to humans. It is well documented
in the literature that protease inhibitors do act as an antinutritional
factor. Animal experiments show that inhibitors depress growth
by interfering with protein digestion, but perhaps even more importantly,
lead to hypertrophy and hyperplasia of the pancreas. It is also
known that the human pancreas responds negatively to the effects
of a protease inhibitor. (FIFRA
Scientific Advisory Panel, SAP Report No. 2000-03B, September
28, 2000).
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The following
few pages stem from a remarkable scientific investigation and pioneering
analysis of data in the early 1990’s that would forever change
the way that I would interpret the vexing problem of synthetic pesticide
residues on fruits, vegetables and other natural foods and indeed
the assumed esteem of organically grown produce. I was at the time
a successful self-sufficient grower of my own organic vegetable
requirements, pioneering the use of botanical pesticides (plant
extracts) in organic methods.
I was then also an active
researcher/author critical of synthetic agrichemical practices,
having 10 years earlier suffered organophosphate pesticide poisoning
whilst living on a strict exclusively fruitarian diet. Within a
year of accessing this research, I abandoned consumption of organic
vegetables for reasons that will become clear, and went instead
in pursuit of organic orchards and fruit as a matter of priority
choice.
The paradigm-shifting research
referred to is that of highly respected biologists from the University
of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, led
by the Professor Bruce Ames, whose credentials, briefly (to list
his expertise, commissions, honours and awards would take 3 pages)
are:
Credentials:
Bruce Ames is Professor (& Chairman of Department)
of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, as well as Director, National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center, all at the University
of California, Berkeley; Senior Scientist at the Nutritional and
Genomics Center, Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute,
CA; and Project Director, National Foundation for Cancer Research,
Bethesda, MA. Ames is a Member of the National Academy of Science,
(USA) (and Commissioner, NAS Commission on Life Sciences) and a
past Member of the Board of Directors of the National Cancer Institute
and the National Cancer Advisory Board. Ames is a recipient of the
Gold Medal Award of the American Institute of Chemists (1991); the
Kehoe Award, American College of Occupational and Environmental
Medicine (1997); the prestigious U.S. National Medal of Science
(1998); the American Society for Microbiology Lifetime Achievement
Award (2001); the Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research
(2001); and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal of the Genetics Society
of America (2004).
Ames’ research focuses
on identifying mutagenic agents that damage human DNA and the consequences
of for cancer and aging and also the antioxidant and other defenses
against them. The Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research
recognises excellence in the field of orthomolecular medicine, especially
the study of micronutrients, vitamins, and phytochemicals in promoting
optimal health and in the prevention and treatment of disease. Dr.
Richard Scanlan, Dean of Research emeritus at Oregon State University
and the chair of the Prize Selection Committee, noted: "Bruce
Ames has been described as the quintessential scientist. His enviable
record of scientific accomplishments has resulted in approximately
450 scientific publications, and he is one of the most cited authors
from the 1970s to the present. Like Pauling, Bruce Ames has been
highly effective in communicating important health care information
to legislative bodies, to policy makers, and to the general public."
Witness for yourself my
précis of this extraordinary revolutionary research and conclusions
starting here:
(Ames B et al, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 87(19), 1990) [Part 2,
pages 7777-7781 of this concurrent trilogy titled ‘Dietary
pesticides (99.99% all natural)’]; (Bruce Ames, Margie Profet
and Lois Swirsky Gold, Chapter 3, ‘Dietary Carcinogens and
Mutagens from Plants’, in ‘Mutagens in Food: Detection
& Prevention’, Hikoya Hayatsu (Ed), CRC Press, 1991):
“The pesticides
in our diet are 99.99% natural. Plants produce toxins to protect
themselves against fungi, insects and animal predators in very much
greater variety and at levels thousands of times higher than synthetic
pesticides. Protecting crops is a trade-off between nature’s
pesticides and synthetic pesticides.
“Although only
50 natural pesticides have been tested in animal cancer bioassays,
about half, similar to synthetic chemicals, are positive as carcinogens
(cancer causing). The proportion of natural pesticides that that
are clastogenic (break chromosomes in tissue culture) is also the
same for synthetic chemicals.”
“Although more
than 99.9% of the chemicals humans eat are natural, only 75 of these
have been tested in both rats and mice and about half are carcinogens.
A high proportion of all chemicals, natural and synthetic, will
prove to be mutagenic (mutations), carcinogenic and teratogenic
(reproductive toxins).”
“Since such a
high proportion of test agents are positive, it is important to
try to rank possible carcinogenic hazards from various chemicals.
We used existing animal data to find out how close human exposures
to rodent carcinogens compare to one another in terms of possible
tumor induction hazard.”
“Natural chemicals
can and have been used by us as a reference for evaluating carcinogenic
hazards from synthetic chemicals, which latter should ‘not’
be treated as a significant carcinogenic hazard if its own possible
hazard is far below that of natural chemicals found in many common
natural food items.”
“Nature’s
pesticides are one important group of natural chemicals that we
have investigated. Tens of thousands of natural plant protective
toxins have recently been discovered. Every species of plant (including
those consumed by humans) usually contains a few dozen different
natural pesticidal toxins.”
“Some 10,000 natural
pesticides are digested by humans at levels about 10,000 times more
than man-made pesticides, in concentrations measured in parts per
thousand or parts per million, rather than (the miniscule) parts
per billion concentrations of synthetic pesticide residues on these
same food plants.”
“It is possible
that every plant in the supermarket contains natural carcinogens
(legumes, cereals, fungi, herbs, spices and beverages included with
the fruits and vegetables) at levels commonly measured in the (highest)
parts per thousand ranges, ie. thousands of times higher than from
man-made pesticides.”
“The human intake
of natural pesticide toxins varies with diet and would be higher
in vegetarians. Stressed and pest attacked (eg organically grown)
plants increase their natural pesticide levels manyfold, occasionally
to levels that are acutely toxic to humans” (extremely rare
with synthetic pesticides).
“Routinely, about
1,500mg of natural pesticides daily are ingested from food plant
products. Surprisingly few have been tested in animal cancer bioassays.
Among 1052 chemicals tested in at least one animal species, only
52 are naturally occurring plant pesticides, of which about half
are carcinogenic.”
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Known ‘Natural’ Pesticides and
their metabolites ingested in Cabbage: |
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Glucosinolates:
1) 2-propenyl glucosinolate
(sinigrin); 2) 3-methylthiopropyl
glucosinolate; 3) 3-methylsulfinylpropyl
glucosinolate; 4) 3-butenyl
glucosinolate; 5) 2-hydroxy-3-butenyl
glucosinolate; 6) 4-methylthiobutyl
glucosinolate; 7) 4-methylsulfinylbutyl
glucosinolate; 8) 4-methylsulfonylbutyl
glucosinolate; 9) benzyl
glucosinolate; 10) 2-phenylethyl
glucosinolate; 11) propyl
glucosinolate; 12) butyl
glucosinolate;
Indole glucosinolates and related indoles:
13) 3-indolylmethyl glucosinolate
(glucobrassicin); 14)
1-methoxy-3-indolylmethyl glucosinolate (neoglucobrassicin);
15) indole-3-carbinol;
16) indole-3-acetonitrile;
17) bis(3-indolyl)methane;
Isothiocyanates and goitrin:
18) allyl isothiocyanate;
19) 3-methylthiopropyl isothiocyanate;
20) 3-methylsulfinylpropyl
isothiocyanate; 21) 3-butenyl
isothiocyanate; 22) 5-vinyloxazolidine-2-thione
(goitrin); 23) 4-methylthiobutyl
isothiocyanate; 24) 4-methylsulfinylbutyl
isothiocyanate; 25) 4-methylsulfonylbutyl
isothiocyanate; 26) 4-pentenyl
isothiocyanate; 27) benzyl
isothiocyanate; 28) phenylethyl
isothiocyanate;
Cyanides:
29) 1-cyano-2,3-epithiopropane;
30) 1-cyano-3,4-epithiobutane;
31) 1-cyano-3,4-epithiopentane;
32) threo-1-cyano-2-hydroxy-3,4-epithiobutane;
33) erythro-1-cyano-2-hydroxy-3,4-epithiobutane;
34) 2-phenylpropionitrile;
35) allyl cyanide;
36) 1-cyano-2-hydroxy-3-butene;
37) 1-cyano-3- methylsulfinylpropane;
38) 1-cyano-4-methylsulfinylbutane;
Terpenes:
39) 5-methyl-2-(1-methylethyl)-cyclohexanol;
40) 5-methyl-2-propan-2-yl-cyclohexan-1-ol;
41) 2-isopropyl-5-methylcyclohexanol;
42) 2-methyl-5-(1-methylethenyl)-2-cyclo-hexene-1-one;
Phenols:
43) 2-methoxyphenol;
44) 3-caffoylquinic acid (chlorogenic
acid); 45) 4-caffoylquinic
acid; 46) 5-caffoylquinic
acid (neochlorogenic acid); 47)
4-(p-coumaroyl)quinic acid; 48)
5-(p-coumaroyl)quinic acid; 49)
5-feruloylquinic acid. |
“Of the natural pesticide chemicals in cabbage not tested
for carcinogenicity, several are likely to be mutagenic and carcinogenic.
Chlorogenic acid and allyl isothiocyanate are clastogenic. Chlorogenic
acid, its metabolite caffeic acid and allyl isothiocyanate, are
mutagens, the latter causing papillomas.”
“Sinigrin is co-carcinogenic.
Sinigrin gives rise to allyl isothiocyanate on eating raw cabbage.
Indole acetonitrille forms a nitroso carcinogen in the presence
of nitrite. Indole carbinol, on ingestion, forms dimers and trimers,
which mimic dioxin (TCCD), probably the most widely feared industrial
toxin of all.”
“The mitogenic
effects of goitrin (which is also goitrogenic) and various organic
cyanides from cabbage suggest that they may be potential carcinogens.
Aromatic cyanides related to those from cabbage are known mutagens
and are metabolized to hydrogen cyanide and potentially mutagenic
aldehydes.”
“Caution is necessary
in interpreting the implications of occurrence of rodent carcinogenic
natural pesticides. It is not argued that these are relevant to
human cancer, but that exposures to natural rodent carcinogens casts
doubt on the relevance of far lower exposure levels to synthetic
rodent carcinogens.”
“Indeed a diet
rich in fruit and vegetables (not necessarily other food classes)
is associated with lower cancer rates, probably because of anticarcinogenic
vitamins and antioxidants in plants (which protect equally against
natural and synthetic carcinogens, since the toxicology of both
types of toxins is similar.”
“The U.S. FDA
has assayed food for known toxic synthetic chemicals, including
pesticides and found residues averaging about 0.09 mg per person
per day. We consider 0.05 mg of pesticide residues per day to be
a reasonable rough estimate, which we compare to 1.5 g of natural
plant pesticides consumed.”
“Most of this daily
intake of synthetic pesticides is composed of chemicals that were
not carcinogenic in rodent tests. The intake of rodent carcinogens
from synthetic residues would thus maximally be only about 0.05
mg a day (averaging about 0.06 ppm in plant food) even if all were
carcinogenic in rodents.”
(Ames
B et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
USA, 87(19)[Part 2], 7777-7781, 1990).
In Part 1, pages 7772-7776
of this trilogy (by Ames and Gold), titled ‘Chemical Carcinogenesis:
Too Many Rodent Carcinogens’, the authors, whose earlier
work and development of the ‘Ames test for mutagenicity’
led to the banning of synthetic chemicals and their being the darlings
of the environmental lobby and later recipients of an Outstanding
Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute for this work,
concluded in Part 1 of this trilogy: “We conclude that
at the low doses of most human exposures, the hazards to humans
of rodent carcinogens may be much lower than is commonly assumed.”
I had read Ames’ earlier
seminal research (Science, 221(4617),
1983) but wrongly believed, as many still do, that our
body’s defences somehow coped with natural toxins, yet failed
against synthetic toxics, but in Part 3, pp 7782-7786 of their 1990
trilogy in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
titled: ‘Nature's and synthetic chemicals: Comparative
Toxicology’, Ames, Profet and Gold wrote as follows:
“The toxicology
of synthetic chemicals is compared to that of natural chemicals,
the vast bulk to which humans are exposed. Animals have a broad
array of inducible general defenses (sic) to combat the
changing array of toxic chemicals and these defenses are effective
against both natural and synthetic toxins.”
“The synthetic
toxin dioxin is compared to indole carbinol, a natural chemical
in broccoli. The finding that a high proportion of both natural
and synthetic chemicals are carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens and
clastogens undermines current regulatory efforts to protect public
health from synthetic chemicals.”
“It is often assumed
that because plants are part of human evolutionary history, whereas
synthetic chemicals are more recent, the mechanisms evolved to cope
with the toxicity of natural chemicals will fail to protect us against
synthetic chemicals. This assumption is flawed for several reasons.”
”Defenses that
have evolved are mostly of a general type, as might be expected,
since the number of natural chemicals that might have toxic effects
is so large. General defenses offer protection not only against
natural but also against synthetic chemicals, making humans well
buffered against toxins.” (Ames
B, Magaw N, Gold L, Science, 236, 271-280, 1987); (Ames B, Gold
L, Science 238, 1634, 1987); (Jakoby W (Ed) Enzymatic Basis of Detoxification,
vols I and II, Academic Press, New York, 1980)
“The reason that
plant predators evolved general defenses against toxins is presumably
to be prepared to counter a diverse and ever-changing array of plant
toxins in an evolving world; if favoured foods became scarce or
evolved new toxins.” (If this were not so, humans would have
remained frugivores or perished)
“Various natural
toxins, some of which have been present throughout vertebrate evolutionary
history, nevertheless do cause cancer. Mold aflatoxins cause cancer
in rats, mice, monkeys and humans. Many common elements, including
selenium and chromium are carcinogenic despite evolutionary presence.”
“Plants have been
evolving and refining their chemical weapons for at least 500 million
years. Humans have not had time to evolve into a ‘toxic harmony’
with all of the plants in their diet. Indeed, very few of the plants
that humans currently eat would have been present in an earlier
evolutionary diet.”
“The human diet
has changed drastically in the last few thousand years, and most
humans are eating many recently introduced plants that their ancestors
did not. Natural selection works far too slowly for humans to have
evolved specific resistance to the food toxins in these newly introduced
plants.”
“Poisoning from
plant toxins in the milk of foraging animals was quite common in
previous centuries. Plants foraged by cows are not toxins to which
humans could have easily adapted. Abraham Lincoln's mother died
from drinking cow's milk that had been contaminated with toxins
from the snakeroot plant.”
“Anticarcinogenic
phytochemicals in the diet protect humans equally well against synthetic
and natural carcinogens. Multiple hazard chemical synergisms occur
from both natural and synthetic sources. These anticarcinogens do
not distinguish whether carcinogens are synthetic or natural in
origin.”
“Natural and synthetic
toxins can have the same toxicity mechanisms. Cabbage family vegetables
contain indole carbinol, converted by stomach acid to dimers and
trimers that bind to the body’s Ah receptor and which, in
the presence of eg aflatoxin, causes mitogenesis, just like the
feared synthetic dioxin (TCDD).”
“The US EPA's
human ‘reference dose’ of dioxin (TCDD) is 6 femtograms
(fg) per kilogram per day. This should be compared with 5 mg of
IC per 100 g of broccoli or cabbage. The effective dose to the Ah
receptor from a helping of cabbage or broccoli would be 500- 1,500
times higher than that of dioxin.”
“Since no plot
of land is immune to attack by insects, plants, especially those
who are the result of selective (palatability) breeding, need chemical
defenses --either natural or synthetic-- to survive pest attack.
There is an inevitable trade-off between nature's pesticides and
synthetic pesticides.”
“Wild plants and
especially plants bred for pest resistance, contain more natural
toxins and have caused unprecedented toxicity problems. ‘Organic
farmers’ use natural pesticides that are not as extensively
tested, if at all, for mutagenicity, carcinogenicity or teratogenicity
as are synthetic pesticides.”
“With mutagens
there is some theoretical justification for thinking that low doses
may have an effect, although the complexities of inducible protection
systems may well produce a dose-response threshold, or even protective
effects at very low doses. The high endogenous DNA damage rate is
also relevant.”
“Several chemicals
that have been shown to be carcinogens at high doses in rodents
have also been shown to be anticarcinogens in other animal models
at lower doses, eg limonene, caffeic acid, dioxin and indole carbinol.
Therefore, the dose, frequency and duration of any chemical exposure
will be critical.”
“The first rule
of toxicology is that all chemicals are ‘toxic chemicals’.
It is always the dose that makes the poison. There should be a threshold
of attention for hypothetical risks that are low compared to the
(overwhelming greater) background risks, otherwise resources are
diverted from more important risks.”
“The arguments
in these papers undermine many assumptions of current (double standard)
regulatory policy and necessitate a rethinking of policy designed
to reduce human cancer. Dietary imbalances (deficiencies and excesses,
not synthetic pesticides) are likely a major contributor to human
cancer.”
(Ames
B et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
USA, 87(19) [Part 3], 7782 - 7786, 1990).
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Back
in 1983, assuming that biologists knew the facts, Ames did not attempt
to persuasively state the above aspect of his work and as a result,
I placed blind faith in my naive belief in a relatively benign natural
world and determined not to take the implications of these findings
too seriously, though my food choices and growing practices underwent
moderate reform. Due to my considerable delay in taking this research
more seriously, until Ames did state the case of a hostile natural
world more persuasively, I am now labouring this point here in the
hope that the reader will be assisted hereby to grasp these facts
now, rather than bury their head in the sand, praising, or heaven
forbid, consuming all things organic as ‘good’.
Five years after their groundbreaking
1983 Science paper, which was graced with an editorial dedicated
to their contribution, Ames and Gold stated briefly: “both
rodents and humans have developed many types of general (rather
than specific) defences against the large amounts and enormous variety
of toxic (natural pesticide) chemicals in plants” (Ames
B, Gold L, Science, 238:1634, 1987). Ames later argued
to the effect that: “Experimental evidence indicates that
these general defences are effective against both natural and synthetic
compounds, since the basic mechanisms of carcinogenesis are not
unique to either” (Ames
B, Chapter 14, ‘Pesticide Residues and Cancer Causation, in
‘Carcinogenicity of Pesticides’, ACS Symposium Series
414, 1989). This point, restated in several published
papers over the years, remains unrebutted to this day, to the point
that this contention is today a scientifically irrefutable matter
of fact.
In a paper titled ‘Rodent
Carcinogens: Setting Priorities’, the Berkeley biologists
put it thus: “It has often been wrongly assumed that humans
have evolved defenses against the natural chemicals in our diet
but not against the synthetic chemicals. However, because defenses
that animals have evolved are mostly general rather than specific
for particular chemicals and are generally inducible and because
the toxicology of both natural and synthetic chemicals similar,
our defenses protect equally well from low doses of both synthetic
and natural chemicals.” (Gold
L et al, Science, 258:261, 1992)
One Berkeley evolutionary
biologist, specialising in and elucidating the detoxification mechanisms
used by our immune systems to cope with natural and now against
synthetic toxins, summarised in a thesis titled “The function
of allergy: immunological defense against toxins”, as
follows: “The mammalian immune response known as "allergy"
evolved as a defense against the extensive array of toxic substances
that exist in the form of secondary plant compounds. Substances
that bind covalently to serum proteins generally are acutely toxic,
and because many of these substances also bind covalently to the
DNA of target cells, they are potentially mutagenic and carcinogenic
as well. Thus, by protecting against acute toxicity, allergy may
also defend against mutagens and carcinogens." (Profet
M, Q Rev Biol, 66(1), 1991)
Profet recommends that:
“pregnant women don't eat pungent vegetables”.
Whilst extensively reviewing the literature on plant toxins and
birth defects, she posits that: “the pregnancy sickness
nausea many women experience in the first trimester are adaptations
designed to protect embryos whereby some toxins in plants including,
for instance, allyl isothiocyanate, a carcinogen found in cabbage,
cauliflower and brussels sprouts that evolved to ward off herbivores,
and which could, even in tiny amounts, cause defects during the
critical stage when organs are forming. Once the embryonic organs
are more or less formed, hormones allow nausea to subside and women
can eat less discriminatingly.” In 1993, Profet won the
‘genius award’, a $500,000 no-strings-attached fellowship
from the MacArthur Foundation, awarded for recognition of people
who demonstrate exceptional creativity in their field to foster
lasting improvement in the human condition. (Marguerite
Holloway, Profile: Margie Profet, Scientific American, April, 1996)
Animals, including humans,
have evolved enzymes and ligand-binding proteins to metabolize and
eliminate many natural environmental chemicals. They have also evolved
adaptive mechanisms, stress responses, and checkpoint pathways to
prevent or correct damage from various environmental chemicals.
Thanks to the broad specificities of these proteins and adaptive
processes, animals also detoxify and adaptively respond to many
synthetic chemicals as well, even though the animal has never seen
these chemicals before in its evolution. Still, some small fraction
of old and new chemicals, synthetic and natural, can elude the animal’s
defenses enough to impact components of its developmental processes,
thereby leading to developmental defects. (Scientific
Frontiers in Developmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment, Committee
on Developmental Toxicology, Board on Environmental Studies and
Toxicology, National Research Council, National Academies Press,
2000) [ISBN:0-309-50176-8].
Significantly, use of persistent
pesticides are extremely rare in developed societies today and modern
formulations are designed to biodegrade their actives within a short
withholding period ‘prior’ to harvest, whereas nature’s
pesticides persist beyond harvest until either rendered inedible
through decomposition or metabolised as toxins or to toxins in the
bodies of consumers. On the subject of persistent chemicals, consider
the research of another expert, Gordon Gribble, professor of chemistry
at Dartmouth College and the world authority on organohalogens,
infamous persistent compounds that include Dioxin and DDT. Gribble
points out that: “plants also make organochlorines that
serve as natural pesticides. The cabbage family, including cabbage,
broccoli, turnips and rapeseed (canola), create a bromine-based
organohalogen, methyl bromide, the very same ozone-depleting industrial
chemical used as a fumigant pesticide. Rapeseed fields alone account
for about 6,600 tons of this organobromine compound each year, (an
astonishing) 15 percent of the total from human activities”.
(Gordon Gribble, ‘Nature Mimics
Industry’, Dartmouth News, Dartmouth College, USA, July 2004);
(Gribble G, Amazing Organohalogens, American Scientist, 92(4), 2004);
(Gribble G, ‘Organic Halogen Compounds’, in ‘Chemistry:
Foundations and Applications’, 200-203, Vol 3, Lagowski, J
(Ed), Macmillan Reference USA, NY, 2004); (Gribble G, ‘Natural
Organohalogens: Occurrence, Sources, Quantities, Natural Function,
and Benefits’, Euro Chlor Science Dossier, 1-77, 2004).
To be continued…………..(whereupon
we shall evaluate the double-standard safety/toxicity and risk/benefit
ratios of pesticides permitted within the organic agriculture movement
and also dispel the myth that modern organic produce is significantly
more nutritious than conventional modern produce). |
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