We have looked at all the governments published residue results between Jan 2000 and December 2005, and summarised what they tell us about the pesticide residues in bread.

Ordinary bread has been tested on ten occasions since the beginning of 2000. This includes samples of white, brown, wholemeal, granary and multigrain bread.  (Speciality bread, savoury bread, part baked bread and fruited bread were covered by the PRC in separate surveys).
 
We have separated out data for white bread from the rest, which we denote “other bread” because there are distinct differences in the occurrence of residues on white bread compared with other types.

Total numbers of samples of bread:

Bread type	Non-organic*	Organic*	Total
White	517	11	528
Other	400	8	408
Total	917	19	936

*Exact breakdown of totals into non-organic and organic is subject to slight uncertainty.

Each sample weighs at least 0.5 kg.

Which pesticides turn up on bread?
Four different pesticides were found on bread over the ten surveys. These are (with approximate percentages of non-organic survey samples reported to contain them):

1	Chlormequat	57%
2	Glyphosate	16%
3	Pirimiphos-methyl	5%
4	Malathion	1%

Find out more about the health and environmental effects of these pesticides

How frequently do residues occur on bread?
60% (559) of all samples contained measurable residues, but white bread had fewer samples with residues than other bread.

Bread type	Samples containing residues	Organic samples containing residues	Percentage of samples containing residues	Percentage of non-organic samples containing residues
White	234	0	44%	45%
Other	325	0	80%	81%
Total	559	0	60%	61%

12% (111) of samples had more than one pesticide residue. The highest number of pesticides found in one sample was three.  The average number of pesticides found in non-organic samples was 0.74.  Taking into account only those samples that do contain residues, the average number of pesticides found was 1.2

Bread type	Samples containing more than one residue	Percent non-organic samples	Mean number of pesticides/sample	Mean number of pesticides/sample with residues
White	14	3%	0.48	1.06
Other	97	24%	1.07	1.32
Total	111	12%	0.74	1.21