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Unlabelled red peppers on sale in South London market. Photo: Peter Beaumont |
Spain has temporarily banned the use of a chemical on all fruit and vegetable crops after high residues were found in exports of sweet peppers to other European Union states. Methamidophos, an organophosphate insecticide, has been withdrawn for the current growing season and the Spanish authorities have destroyed peppers which may contain it.
Careless mistake
But endosulfan – an organochlorine insecticide found in the peppers – will remain in use. ‘This was just carelessness, and we are tightening our controls on the use of this chemical,’ said Dr Rafael Cavestany, agricultural counsellor at the Spanish embassy in London.
Before the next pepper growing season starts in November, Dr Cavestany said the Spanish Government would write to the European Commission about the tolerance levels for methamidophos. ‘Codex Alimentarius recommends a tolerance level of 1.0 parts per million (mg/kg) for the chemical in vegetables, but the EU has broken this down into 1.0 ppm for cucumbers, 0.5 ppm for tomatoes, 0.2 ppm for aubergines and 0.01 ppm for peppers. Why is this – does someone necessarily eat more peppers than cucumbers, for example?’ Methamidophos was a very good product for controlling white fly in greenhouses, said Dr Cavestany, and Spain wanted to use it again.
EU states alerted
The Finns found up to 0.9 mg/kg in their residue tests. This was enough to cause mild stomach upsets in people eating a lot of peppers. Other EU governments were warned, and in November, the UK Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) issued a circular saying that as much as 0.8 mg/kg of methamidophos had been found.
Two weeks later, the Finns rejected more Spanish peppers because of high levels of methamidophos and endosulfan: the largest amount of endosulfan was 1.5 mg/kg, against the EU tolerance level of 1.0 mg/kg. At the beginning of December, the Ministry of Agriculture said that monitoring of UK supermarkets over a fortnight showed ten Spanish samples contained methamidophos above the statutory tolerance level introduced in August last year.
Baroness Hayman, the Food Safety Minister, said: ‘Whilst there is no immediate risk to human health, the situation is unacceptable and we are putting pressure on the Spanish authorities to introduce a pre-export screening programme for peppers destined for the UK
market.’(1)
A Ministry spokesman said the PSD would do another survey of peppers and that hundreds of tonnes had been destroyed since the Finnish alert.
Conclusion
Both chemicals have high acute toxicity. Endosulfan has an LD50 of 80 mg/kg (the dose that will kill half a test population of animals) and is subject to the UK poisons
rules(2). Methamidophos is classified ‘highly hazardous’.
‘PAN UK welcomes the pan-European exchange of information,’ said Peter Beaumont, Development Director. ‘But there is clearly an alarming over-use of acutely toxic pesticides in some Spanish pepper production. The next question will be whether other salad crops from the same area are affected.’
References
1. Action taken on pesticide residues in sweet peppers, Ministry of Agriculture press release, 10 December 1999.
2. See also PAN UK website.
[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 47, March 2000, page 18]