22/09/2026
So many pesticides and chemicals banned in other countries are still used in Australia. Buy organic or soak and wash your produce with baking soda for at least 30 mins.
https://www.facebook.com/share/19eecFQXKB/?mibextid=wwXIfr
🌏 Banned in the EU and UK. Still permitted in Australia.
⚠️ Paraquat, atrazine, chlorpyrifos, fipronil, iprodione, carbendazim, methomyl and diuron have all been withdrawn from use across the EU and UK on human health and environmental grounds. Between them, the documented concerns include carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, reproductive and developmental harm, and organ toxicity. All eight remain approved for use here.
🌾 The exposure question matters most where agriculture is dense. In South Australia, roughly half the state's land area has been recorded as agricultural, and the state has seen repeated reports of spray drift, off-target herbicide damage to neighbouring crops, and population-level exposure.
🧒 A cross-sectional study of 340 South Australian preschool children found widespread chronic exposure to organophosphate and pyrethroid insecticides. Because both classes clear quickly from the body, researchers measured urinary metabolites rather than the parent compounds. Concentrations were markedly higher than comparable overseas cohorts, including around six times the level of one organophosphate metabolite (DETP) found in German children.
📊 Chlorpyrifos was a standout in the 2 to 5 year age group. Intake sat at roughly 20% of the Australian acceptable daily intake, yet was reported at around 85 times the level measured in Tokyo children and about 20 times that of the US population. Australia's Total Diet Study has also detected insecticide residues directly in foods, including allethrin in mushrooms and beef sausage.
🇪🇺 In 2020 the EU declined to renew chlorpyrifos approval, citing toxicity and human health concerns, and set the maximum residue level at 0.01 mg/kg, effectively the lowest concentration a laboratory can reliably detect.
🧪 Regulatory limits describe what is permitted. They don't tell you what an individual patient has actually accumulated. Pesticide and environmental toxin testing measures real exposure, which is where the clinical conversation should start.
Source: https://bit.ly/3TxOxMZ
Toxin testing: https://bit.ly/46wmtfP