The Not-So-Dirty Dozen?

Remember the old Westerns? There was always a scene in which an outlaw sees a lone rider appear atop the crest of a hill. Fear mounts. Is it really just the lone rider or will a huge posse soon gallop up behind? Alone, the rider is not much of a threat, but backed by an army, he’ll strike fear into the heart of any outlaw.

It’s a similar situation with pesticides, where the risk has everything to do with numbers. The simple presence of a pesticide doesn’t necessarily pose a health hazard; the risk is tied to the amount of pesti­cide a food contains. “The dose makes the poison,” says Carl K. Winter, PhD, director of the FoodSafe Program at the University of California, Davis and a member of the Institute of Food Technologists.

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