Sludge Watch ==> Striking results in toxic testing between kids who eat organic - non-organic

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

As most of you know, crops grown on sewage sludge ('biosolids') is not 
allowed to be considered certified organic, due to all the pollutants in the 
sludge.

Here is another reason why we need to stop land applying sludge.

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http://blog.oregonlive.com/nwheadlines/2008/01/seattle_study_show_striking_gu.html

Seattle study shows striking toxicity gulf between kids who ate organic and 
conventional foods
The Oregonian January 30, 2008 06:59AM
Categories: Puget Sound


Whether or not it was up to harmful levels is unclear. But kids on Mercer 
Island who ate organic ended up free of pesticides that stayed with kids who 
ate mainstream. The Post-Intelligencer's investigative reports Andy 
Schneider has the grocery goods.

Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging 
pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong 
study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.
The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a 
variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological 
markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the 
creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of 
pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal 
author of the study published online in the current issue of Environmental 
Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides 
(malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. 
The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," 
said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a 
leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the 
pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two 
elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.

The community has double the median national income, but the wealth of 
Mercer Island made no difference in the outcome, he said.

"We are confident that if we did the same study in poor communities, we 
would get the same results," he said. The study is being repeated in 
Georgia.