M8.3:Pesticides

What did you find out about the pesticide residues that may be in or on your food?    What do you think about this?   What should we be doing about this in terms of public health, not just in terms of our personal choices?

 Last night I went out to dinner and had a sashimi salad. In the what's on my food website they don't have all the ingredients that was in the salad, there was only information on lettuce and cucumber. What I saw was very alarming, see the pictures below. The numbers were high in suspected hormone disruptor, 32 in cucumber, neurotoxins and developmental or reproductive toxins is in high levels too. Lettuce and cucumbers are very common vegetables used in many households and restaurants, its hard to imagine we have been eating these pesticides that are causing harm to our health. It is not just human health but theres bad effect on the honeybees, which are important for pollination. I think we need to discontinue the use of pesticides in our agriculture and promote going organic in order to reduce the harmful impact on public health. The public need to be educated about these dangerous substances and join in the fight against using pesticide. I think I would really need to wash my vegetables and fruits more carefully, to reduce the amount of pesticide.



Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 19, 2018 at 6:47 PM

    Hi Feng,

    I think a lot of times we order the "healthier" salad options in restaurants and don't realize that if they are not washed properly or is the low carb option that we are not getting exposed to harm. I am realizing the raw vegetables and fruits just like lettuce and cucumber are exceedingly high in pesticides!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMarch 19, 2018 at 6:54 PM

    I agree, the public needs to be more educated about pesticides and chemicals used on the produce that we eat. I was shocked when I found that the non organic produce contains that many chemicals that we are potentially eating everyday. We definitely need to change our habits immediately and educate out communities as well.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

M12.9: Climate Change

1) What do you personally find most troubling about climate change? What I find most troubling about climate change is there are people that are ignorant to the seriousness about it, refusing to believe that is the cause of many natural disasters and would not support the prevention of climate change. I don't understand why not everyone is on board with making changes to reduce the impact of climate change to ensure that our planet still have a future. 2) As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now? As a public health professional, I think what needs the greatest attention right now is climate change. The impact and after effect of climate change is on all our essential to maintain our lifestyle. Climate change impact air quality, causes drought, flood, superstorm, and wildfire which influence water quality, marine life and agriculture, and all these environmental changes have consequences on human health. Everything comes in ful...
Read more

M14.4: Think about it

Living in the middle of the Pacific ocean, hurricanes are pretty common each year. Fortunately, we haven't been hit by any major hurricanes, but we have suffered many storms resulting from the hurricanes that pass through. The NCDMPH website provides very useful information on health information for travelers which is much needed since Hawaii is tourist destination. The website also provides information on epidemics from dead bodies, how to handle psychosocial needs of children after the disaster, possible environmental impacts, evacuation plans and recovery plans. I think this website is a great resource to have especially with global warming, more hurricanes are expected to happen. In Hawaii we do have something similar to the Disaster Healthcare Volunteer, which is called the Medical Reserve Corp, part of the Department of Health, where they have medical, public health and non-healthcare volunteers that responds to community needs and disasters. We also have the American Red C...
Read more

Week 14 blog: Water shortage by 2050?

The UN has just reported that 5 billion people will be affected by water shortage by 2050 due to increase demand and pollution.This is a scary scenario if we all don't come up with solutions to prevent that from happening. Recently in Colorado, there have been suggestions of reusing water, but that still requires more study. In the article they suggest a greener approach, instead of using steels and concretes infrastructures to manage water, instead revert back to nature especially for agriculture, where we should utilize rainwater rather than irrigation. Another suggestion was switching to dry toilets, a toilet that don't use water to flush, minimizing water use. I  don't know if I can handle a dry toilet, but it is true that amount of water we are using to flush, if a solution can come up which is hygienic without  the use of water then I would support it. Water is essential for life, so we should all do our parts to conserve water and take care of our environment so we d...
Read more