October 16, 2006

toxicologists and chemists react to WWF report on chemicals in food

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report claims that chemicals such as pesticides, PCBs, flame retardants and other endocrine-disruptors have been found in food consumed throughout Europe.

Professor Alan Boobis, Imperial College London, said:

“We should not be complacent about the presence of these chemicals in foods and should keep trying to reduce the levels. But we should also maintain a balanced view about whether these trace amounts represent a risk to the consumer and I don’t believe that at these levels they represent a significant threat to human health.”

Professor John Henry, toxicologist and Professor of Accident and Emergency, St Mary’s Hospital, London, said:

“I accept that WWF are well intentioned but showing that traces of these chemicals are in food is not the same as providing the evidence to demonstrate that they do harm . There are many, many more things that we are putting into our bodies that are known to do harm that we should all be worrying about.”

Dr Andrea Sella, Chemistry department at UCL, said:

“This strikes me as something of a distraction. Modern analytical methods are so sensitive that it is not surprising that traces of all sorts of molecules can be found in a variety of foods. But the numbers are incredibly small – mostly around ng/g ie one thousand millionth of a gram per gram – and it strikes me that this article is ignoring the elephant in the room. For example these guys have found traces of metabolites of DDT in sausages and butter. Surely the greater health risk to humans is not the ingestion of traces of DDE but rather the saturated fats in the sausages themselves, since such fats are a well-established and non-controversial contributor to heart disease, which is a major killer in the UK.”