by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
Testing commissioned by ABC News and conducted by the Health Research Institute, an accredited independent lab in Iowa, detected 38 different pesticides in just one elementary school lunch.
Food items served to school kids in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., contained heavy metals, including lead, and roughly 50 pesticides, according to new testing commissioned by ABC News.
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The Health Research Institute (HRI), an accredited independent lab in Iowa, conducted the testing. HRI’s Chief Scientist and CEO John Fagan told The Defender, “We tested every part of the lunch … it was pretty shocking.”
Nearly 30 million U.S. kids eat school lunch every day, according to the School Nutrition Association.
Fagan’s lab identified 49 pesticides — listed at the end of this article — with 38 different pesticides detected in just one elementary school lunch. Among them was carbendazim, a fungicide banned in most European countries that can cause infertility and endocrine disruption.
Many wheat-based items contained the weedkiller glyphosate, commonly marketed as Roundup, which causes cancer and disrupts immune function.
A single strawberry cup contained 23 pesticides, ABC News reported.
Fagan’s lab also found numerous heavy metals in the samples. According to the Cleveland Clinic, exposure to heavy metals can cause irreversible damage to the human body, and may even be life-threatening.
Lead — which “at any level is harmful to children’s IQ,” Fagan said — was found in 100% of the samples.
Some samples contained cadmium, a heavy metal known to increase the risk of lung cancer, at a level 12 times higher than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) limit for bottled water, according to ABC News.
The lab also found arsenic in rice at levels 6 times higher than what’s allowed in apple juice, ABC News said.
Fagan said, “The children need our help and protection.”
Zen Honeycutt — founder and executive director of Moms Across America, a nonprofit representing hundreds of thousands of mothers who want safer food served to their kids — agreed.
Honeycutt told The Defender that if foreign countries were serving these types and amounts of toxins to our children, “we would call it poison and be at war with them.”
“It is time,” she added, “for parents and concerned citizens to demand that our regulatory agencies require the food suppliers and farmers to do better. This is not an impossible task … it is, in fact, what regenerative, organic and biodynamic farmers do every day.”
School meals should not be ‘another source of toxic exposure’
ABC News released its school lunch testing results nine days after Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced the Safe School Meals Act.
If passed, the bill would direct the FDA to place limits on heavy metals, ban certain pesticide residues and do a safety reassessment of food additives, including artificial food dyes linked to health harms, according to a press release.
The bill also would ban PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” phthalates and bisphenols from school meal food packaging.
Booker said in a Sept. 18 press release that U.S. children consume far too many harmful substances in the food.
“School meals should be a child’s safest source of nourishment,” he said, “not another source of toxic exposure.”
The bill would create “a significant new market opportunity for organic and regenerative farmers” by increasing the funding available for schools to buy safe school meals, Booker added.
Honeycutt urged people to tell their federal representatives to support the bill. “We must make access to safe, nontoxic, nutrient-dense food a priority for the safety of our children and the future of our country.”
Read More @ ChildrensHealthDefense.org
