Other countries regularly test for more pesticides than the UK.  We have to hope that the UK tests cover all the most frequently occurring pesticides, but we cannot be sure.

PAN UK has tried to find which pesticides are likely to occur most frequently in our diet, using the ten worst foods that we have identified from the published Pesticide Residues Committee data.  We have listed 36 of these – their selection is based on both frequency of occurrence and exceeding legal limits.

Some of them, such as carbendazim and dithiocarbamates, occur in several of the worst ten foods, whereas others only appear in one food (such as chlorpropham and maleic hydrazide in potatoes) but with a high frequency.  Similarly, some foods have many more of these pesticides than other foods – fruit tends to have a wide range of pesticides with a low frequency, whereas flour and potatoes tend to have fewer pesticide but each with a higher frequency.  This reflects the range of pesticides that are used to grow and store the crop.

Our research is continuing to identify levels of these pesticides that are occurring in our food.

Click here for more information on the health and environmental impacts of these.

*Group of pesticides, including mancozeb, maneb, zineb