Garden production data

These data suggest that the daily ingestion of dirt and dust by adults is unlikely to exceed 0-5 mg/day even if all of the 137 g of leafy and root vegetables, sweet corn and potatoes consumed by adult males each day were replaced by family garden products. 

The use of daily data used daily as a demand feed is not unique to Apple and Dell. Another early adopter in the use of point of sale data was Scotts Miracle-Gro. The company markets and manufactures consumer lawn and garden products. 

Now I hope you see why I believe that it is criminal to sound an alarm when a pesticide residue is detected on produce at 100 to 1000 times below the tolerance. The tolerance is related to a safety threshold, not a toxic one. This misuse of data totally ignores the entire risk assessment process that is appropriately conservative and protective of human health. What is even more ironic is that the very chemicals that the public is made to fear in food at these below-tolerance levels are often used by the same individuals in household and garden pesticide products at much higher doses. These are generally proved to be safe for most individuals, making worrying about food concentrations millions of times lower a totally worthless experience that detracts us from more serious concerns. 

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