Dr Rupy: Which one food would you always buy organic?
Nick: Citrus fruits or soft fruits like strawberries or apples and pears.
Dr Rupy: Okay, interesting. Will washing fruit and vegetables with water actually work if I can't afford organic?
Nick: Probably not.
Dr Rupy: What's the number one thing we should all be doing to reduce pesticide exposure?
Nick: A number of things. Choosing certain organic produce would perhaps be the best way to avoid dietary exposure.
Dr Rupy: Quite a controversial question. Do pesticides cause cancer?
Nick: Yes.
Dr Rupy: Interesting. All right, Nick, we have a lot to go through. We have a lot to go through.
Hi, I'm Dr Rupy, I'm a medical doctor and nutritionist. And when I suffered a heart condition years ago, I was able to reverse it with diet and lifestyle. This opened up my eyes to the world of food as medicine to improve our health. On this podcast, I discuss ways in which you can use nutrition and lifestyle to improve your own wellbeing every day. I speak with expert guests and we lean into the science, but whilst making it as practical and as easy as possible so you can take steps to change your life today. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast.
Is organic worth it or just clever marketing? We've all been there, standing in the supermarket, holding two identical looking apples and wondering if the price difference is actually doing anything for our health. And if we want safer food, how do we push for a system where pesticide-free isn't just for those who can afford organic? Well, today, I'm going to be asking these big questions to Nick Mole from PAN UK. We're going to dive into what pesticides are and how they are used, whether washing fruit and vegetables actually removes them or not, and if organic is actually worth it, and if so, which ingredients are the most important to go organic. Now, this is a scary topic that goes way beyond food and where you might find a lot of people online making definitive claims about the harms of pesticides and GMO. But the honest answer to a lot of these questions is unfortunately and irritatingly, we just don't know. But from what we do know, I think we can all afford to be more pragmatic, sceptical and aware, particularly when it comes to the cocktail effect, as we get into a little bit later.
PAN UK, also known as Pesticide Action Network, is the only UK charity focused solely on tackling the problems caused by pesticides and promoting safe and sustainable alternatives in agriculture, urban areas, homes and gardens. Nick joined PAN UK in 2007, having previously worked as a campaigner for the Environmental Investigation Agency. He leads on PAN's national policy work, undertaking research, analysing data and gathering evidence to support the organisation's call to government, regulators, policy makers to reduce the impact of harmful pesticides to both human health and of course, the environment. And if you're interested in organic produce, which I am, certainly after listening to Nick talk about it today, I'm really pleased to let you know that I am Chief Science Officer of Exhale Coffee. We are an organic coffee brand. Everything is lab tested to be free of mould and mycotoxins, which is abhorrent and very, very common in coffee supply chains. And if you want to try a bag of not just healthy, but delicious coffee, click on the link in your podcast player or use the code RUPY241 for a bag free. Buy one and get a bag free. And if you're interested in delicious, healthy recipes, I am currently obsessed with our healthy snacks category on the Doctor's Kitchen app. You can try the Doctor's Kitchen app for free for a couple of weeks. We've got over a thousand recipes that all have health goals. We explain why these are attributable to certain health goals, whether it be menopause, gut health, our newest health goal, brain health, skin health, etc. And we're also expanding our learn section as well, where I'm going to be soon to do courses that will help you cooking delicious, healthy food for your family and loved ones as well. So make sure you check it out. For now, onto my podcast with Nick. And if you have any feedback for us at the Doctor's Kitchen and for the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Just click the link in your podcast player right now.
Why don't we first start by talking about pesticides more broadly? You know, I think I we banned around terms quite a bit. Even I do, pesticides. What are actually pesticides? What are they used for and how would you explain it to our audience?
Nick: Okay. Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms. They're the only thing that are legally put out into the environment with the express purpose of killing something. And that's what they do. They do their job very, very well. Unfortunately, they don't limit themselves to just those things that are deemed as pests or something that you don't want. And when I'm talking about pesticides, I'm talking about the whole range of sides that kill things. So insecticides that kill insects, herbicides that kill plants, fungicides that kill fungus, molluscicides, slugs, etc, etc. So anything with a side on the end of it sort of falls under the category of pesticide.
Dr Rupy: Okay, great. So in my mind, I'm picturing pesticides as more of an umbrella term that encompasses all those different types of sides that have the explicit role of killing things, whether that's specific animals, pests or insects, plants. Now, that kind of sounds scary, but I guess the parallel in my mind at least as a medic, I'm thinking about antibiotics. We can use antibiotics in a broad spectrum way that can have negative consequences, but we can also use it in a very targeted way depending on the type of antibiotic, the format of the antibiotic. Is that how you would class the same thing or would you would you say it's
Nick: There are yeah, there are certainly parallels with that. I mean, pesticides is a it's an interesting area. There is not a there's a lot of grey areas involved in it. It's not a all pesticides are bad or all pesticides are good. It's it's, you know, they have a function. There's no question about that. And certainly since sort of the end of the Second World War when they really started developing and there was a need to grow more food, they played a role in that by protecting crops from pests and diseases and allowing us to sort of grow enough food to to feed ourselves, etc. So they do have a role. It's they're not not all of them are equal. So some are more hazardous, more toxic than others. There's also a great deal of overuse, misuse, unnecessary use and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I think parallels are there are some interesting parallels there. I mean, one of the one of the parallels is resistance. So resistance develops with overuse as as the same with antibiotics. And you know, we we've seen that since pesticides have started being used. So yeah, there are definitely parallels there. They have their uses, but when they're overused or overprescribed, I guess you could say, we have problems. And likewise, there's probably a more robust, well, I don't think probably, there is a more robust risk assessment for pharmaceutical products. But you also see it in in in pharmaceutical products, you know, something that comes onto the market as the new wonder thing. Down the line causes, you know, huge problems which weren't seen. And we've this is what we see with pesticides over and over and over again. And the risk assessment isn't great, doesn't look at the real world. And we see problems and unforeseen or unpredicted problems and this cycle continues.
Dr Rupy: Within pesticides, are there natural pesticides and synthetic pesticides to further categorise this?
Nick: Yes, I mean, there there are. I mean, pesticides have been used since the dawn of, well, agriculture, thousands and thousands of years ago. So there's always been that kind of use of things like sulphur, but you know, today there's things like mint oil, etc, that will do stuff. So there is a difference between synthetic and non-synthetic pesticides. But it's also worth bearing in mind that whether it's synthetic or not, they're still designed to kill things. So so there has to be an element of caution involved in anything.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So this naturalistic fallacy of, well, it's okay to use this pesticide because it is derived from a natural product is not acceptable, would you say in your opinion?
Nick: Again, it depends on a on a on a case-by-case type thing. So sort of pyrethroids that are extracted, pyrethrins from plants, probably will kill you. Mint oil probably won't. But again, there's there's questions about the dose as well. So you know, the dose making the poison and all that sort of thing, which actually I hope we'll come on to later when we talk about pesticide toxicity. But yeah, so but you would have to use an awful lot more mint oil than you would have to use paraquat, for example, to kill someone, even if it did.
Dr Rupy: And you alluded to it just a moment ago with this bloom in the use of pesticides a few decades ago. What was going on then?
Nick: Well, so sort of pesticides came, a lot of them came, the insecticides in particular, came from developments in chemical warfare during the First World War, Second World War. And all of a sudden they had these things. It's like, what what can we do with them? So, oh, we can use them to to kill pests and insects. We can use them in agriculture because that'll be a great thing. And obviously the First World War and then leading into the Second World War and the you know, the rationing, the the loss of land, the the inability of farm and grow food, particularly in the UK where we were as an island, we were particularly hit by that. We really needed to up food production and and pesticides were a tool, a useful tool for increasing yields and as I say, protecting crops from harm and allowing them to be be harvested and and grown and that sort of thing. So it was that need to increase food production in the UK and globally that that really came into it. And then there's money in pesticides. And and again, we'll probably come back to this as well. Follow the money. They they make huge profits. And so there's this push to use them. And one of the big problems with them is once you start using them, well, it's a bit like an addiction. Once you start using them, it's very hard to to wean yourself off them. Particularly when you look at things like insecticides, we probably, much as it would be nice to switch to organic agriculture overnight, that's not going to happen because we've destroyed the systems that are required to grow organically. So, so this indiscriminate nature of pesticides where they don't just kill the target organism, but also impact other things. Insecticide, it doesn't really care what it kills. And there's no such thing as as an insecticide that will kill just one insect.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So during during this time, sorry, post the World War I and World War II when we had this abundance of chemicals that need to be repurposed and these petrochemical companies need to find a new use case for for these things that they've developed. They're used in agriculture to increase yield, I'm right in thinking?
Nick: Primarily, yes, well, that's exactly it, to increase yield.
Dr Rupy: Okay. And so we get an abundance of produce. I'm assuming prices come down, everyone's sort of happy. Where does the balance sort of tip in your, in in in your mind in terms of how we started overusing and over-relying on them?
Nick: I think I mean it really comes in with the, well, sort of the industrial agricultural model. And whilst pesticides are harmful of themselves, we also know how incredibly harmful in terms of climate, in terms of biodiversity loss and that sort of thing, the industrial agriculture, you know, the the huge monocultures, if you which, you know, we see, pesticide use really underpins that. So it's sort of when it switched from perhaps protecting a few plants and that sort of thing to development of huge, you know, the yeah, the industrial agricultural complex.
Dr Rupy: And when was that would you say? Like when
Nick: I mean it it it sort of all the 50s, 60s, the green revolution as it was bizarrely called. Which it wasn't green at all, but that's what it was called. So yeah, and and you know, we are where we are now. And I think there's actually nowadays there's a realisation that monocultures are no good for anyone. And we need to be going back in the other direction, but again, there's a lot of vested interests at play. Um, yeah.
Dr Rupy: So when people say organic, does that mean pesticide-free?
Nick: Yes and no. Okay. Um, you would think so. There are a very limited number of pesticides that that are allowed to be used in in organic agricultural systems. I think it's around 15, that might that may have changed.
Dr Rupy: Just 15?
Nick: Just 15.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: Compared to well over 400 different active substances. And that's not the only difference. So a pesticide will only be used in an organic system if everything else that has been has been tried has failed. If there is a risk of of losing the crop, so financial damage, and then it would be the least toxic in the least amount to get the job done. So there is absolutely no prophylactic use of pesticides in organic. And and very limited. I mean it's, you know, they have access to these, they have to get approval to use them from the certifying body. And then again, I mean they're rarely used. And on the if you then look at the food, organic food, there's almost never a pesticide residue present on organic produce. And when there is, it's usually as a result of cross-contamination or a persistent old pesticide that happens to be in the soil and hasn't hasn't left the soil. So it's not as a result of use in organic. Um, and that again in itself is is very rare anyway when it is tested. So the end product, you could say is is pretty much 100% residue-free with a few occasional exceptions, the result of cross-contamination. And use is very limited and it's a very limited number of things. And that includes sort of the natural pesticides like some of the the oils, etc.
Dr Rupy: Okay. And who certified who certifies organic in in the UK?
Nick: There are there are a number of bodies. I mean the Soil Association is probably the one that that springs to mind, but there are people like the Organic Farmers and Growers Association who who do a lot of the arable certification, for example. There's a couple of couple of bodies that that do it, but they have to be go through that. So
Dr Rupy: And are they all as stringent as each other? Like you were saying, the farmer has to confirm that they've tried everything else prior to using pesticides.
Nick: They they are all as stringent as each other. There are set standards that that need to be need to be applied and adhered to before something can be called organic.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: And the same actually goes for imported organic produce. So the certifying body of wherever it comes from has to be, you know, the same sort of standards and has to be recognised as being
Dr Rupy: Because we've we've spoken to a few people about particularly supplement products, mushrooms, um, other, uh, certain countries have loopholes where a product can be stamped with the organic label and it actually hasn't met the same rigorous standards that you might find of a product produced within the UK, for example. Is that something that you accept or have come across yourself?
Nick: I I I've heard anecdotally that sort of thing. It's not something that that I've pursued or our organisation has pursued. I'm sure it happens. It happens everywhere, doesn't it? There's always something a counterfeit somewhere. There's always somebody trying to do something. I I wouldn't be able to hazard a guess at how widespread this is. And I think organic in general here and elsewhere, I think, you know, it's a trustworthy thing. It's something you can, you know, it's not it's not somebody slapping a load of mud on some carrots and saying, oh, this is organic when it isn't. There's there's trust in the system and and I think you can you can, yeah, trust the certifying bodies.
Dr Rupy: Certainly in the UK. Yeah. I'm trying to give the listeners and viewers perhaps a heuristic of, okay, if something says organic and it comes from this jurisdiction, this trading body, this European counterpart, whatever it might be, I can pretty much trust it. If it comes from, and not to pick on China, but let's say it comes from China and it says organic, am I going to be able to trust it to the same degree I would do mushrooms coming from somewhere in Bristol or something?
Nick: I mean, I would have thought so because there's there's a huge reputational and financial risk if someone is then currently exposed or caught out. And that does happen frequently. So I think you probably could put your trust in that kind of thing.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: I mean, I mean, again, this is where all these sort of grey area nuances come in. I mean, organic referring to the means of production rather than it is an organic item.
Dr Rupy: Let's talk about that because I don't think people would know the difference between
Nick: Yeah, so so yeah, organic agriculture, it's a way of producing something. That and that's what it means. It's been done in a certain way that meets these organic criteria. And then there's obviously the the broader definition of what constitutes an organic item. So you know, anything could be an organic item.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Because there is this prevailing view, right, that organic is simply a marketing term that, you know, if you buy your organic carrots or you get your conventional carrots, both of them have got pesticides on, there isn't a clear difference. And if you don't buy into the idea that insecticides or pesticides are harmful, then you may as well just save your money and go for conventional. What would you say to that individual?
Nick: I would say that that's probably wrong thinking. Organic is, I mean, it has been and I think there is a problem in the way it has been marketed in some senses in that it it's better for you. Regardless of whether it's better for you or not, it's better for the planet. Organic is about working with nature, not trying to control nature. It's better for biodiversity, it's better for the water that comes off it. It's a better system of growing things. As I say, it's working in harmony with nature. So there are and there are other issues as well around animal welfare. So it's much stronger on animal welfare than than a lot of, certainly the intensive factory farms, livestock systems. So there are much wider benefits to organic than just it might be better for you to eat.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: And I think the jury's probably still out on that, but if you want to avoid pesticide residues, organic is definitely the way to go. There's no no question about it.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So to to summarise it in a different way, if I looked at the nutrient value of an organic carrot versus a conventional carrot, there isn't a strong argument to suggest that the organic carrot is better for me in terms of the plant chemical profile, the micronutrients, the fibre, etc, etc. But it's more the cautious approach of me being pragmatic and reducing my exposure to the pesticides used in conventional farming practices.
Nick: Yeah, I think on the former, the jury's probably still out on on that. There have been studies going both ways. So I don't think you can come to any definitive answer on on that. Um, on the second, yes. I agree with that that point of view. If you want to do that, but also support nature as well. Then organic is a good choice.
Dr Rupy: Let's talk about that, uh, this idea of supporting nature. So I can definitely get on board with this idea that organic, you're using less pesticides, introducing less chemicals into the environment, that's going to be better for our soil health, microbial health, etc. What about this, uh, idea or this sort of like counter-lobbying argument that if you do go fully organic, we wouldn't be able to generate the yield necessary to support our population needs. It's a prevailing argument that I'm sure you've heard of many times. Is there any truth to that?
Nick: Well, I don't think there's anyone pushing for us to go completely organic other than in someone's wildest dreams. At the moment, the UK organic agriculture sector is about two, 3% of the entirety. So that's a very small fraction. It's bigger in some European countries and there are some ambitions to grow the percentage in in some countries. I think, you know, 10% or or whatever. And actually, we would really like to see that here in the UK. You know, why why can't the government set a goal for increasing organic? In terms of yield, I mean, there again, there are a lot of a lot of wider questions that that this brings in. Organic does yield, it yields fine. You know, there's not really a question of that. And and I think there are wider questions. Well, actually, what is being grown anyway? We're probably producing too much food as it is. I mean, this is this is wider questions about the food system as a whole. There's way too, you know, we're we're growing too much food. There's massive amounts of waste. There's an obesity epidemic. Something's going wrong with the food system anyway, which is about distribution and what we're growing and and why we're growing these things. So, whilst we might not, and again, coming back to what we couldn't switch to organic overnight anyway, because, you know, we've we've decimated all the beneficial insects that would help that support it. But I think there is definitely room for growth for organic. And and there should be. And I think that should be a target for the government to increase and support organic conversion, organic growers and and, you know, really push this out because of the wider benefits that that we would see. And I mean, just on a this whole question of exposure as well, it's not just dietary exposure. So, you know, people, residents, rural residents, people who live next to agricultural fields are regularly exposed to pesticides. And again, more organic, less exposure. So it all it all sort of fits. But there's there's room for both. And I think there is also a an interesting halfway house, uh, which is something that we certainly support, which is sort of agroecology, which doesn't necessarily have to be organic.
Dr Rupy: What was that term, sorry?
Nick: Agroecology. So again, that's working with natural systems. Things like integrated pest management, the proper version of it where pesticides are a last resort, a bit like, you know, the approach in organic. So you're reducing that. And there's there's some really good work being done by some farmers who realise that actually our use of chemicals is not sustainable. The nature-friendly farmers network in particular are doing some really good work and not only reducing their inputs of pesticides and and other things, but also actually increasing their farmer's income, which has got to be a good thing. And this again comes back to a very outdated mode of measuring a farmer's success. The bigger the yield, the better the farmer. That's really what's been drummed into farmers. And that's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The measure of success should be your income. And if you can increase your income by reducing your costs for external inputs, even if it means reducing yield a little, then so be it. That that has to be the the better model.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to introduce this idea of regenerative. Is there a difference between regenerative and organic farming?
Nick: Yes. Um, and there's there's some big questions about regenerative and and the sort of the co-opting of the label regenerative by the industrial agriculture sector and a bit of greenwashing. There are some very good genuine regenerative agriculture models out there. They may still use pesticides to a much lesser degree. There is a risk of it being, I think, co-opted. I know there was a sort of risk of of organic several years ago when when there was this notion put forward of intensive organic, which is, you know, an oxymoron if ever I heard one. So again, it's a risk of that. It's it's an interesting, it's an interesting move. I fully understand it. It's great. It's about using whole farm systems. And yes, it works. So I think again, that's one of those sort of bits that sits in between. It's not purely organic. It's certainly reducing massively the the inputs of of, well, pesticides, fertilisers in particular, and looking after soil health, which again is is is vital.
Dr Rupy: In layman's terms, how would you describe regenerative farming?
Nick: It's it's that working with it's a whole farm system. So, you know, you're using you're not a lot of
Dr Rupy: Is an example, like, you know,
Nick: Well, you're using, you know, it's mixed. So you'll have crops, you'll have food crops, you'll also have livestock as well. And the manure from the livestock is used to to fertilise the crops and the crops are used to feed the livestock and that. So it's it's that sort of circular economy in in agriculture. It's that sort of thing. And yeah, it's yeah, so you're getting rid of the inputs and making it a more holistic approach.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, okay. And just so the listener understands the sort of promises of these genetically modified crops. So they were engineered genetically to be resistant to roundup, so they weren't be affected by roundup or, you know, a broad spectrum pesticide. So you could use the pesticide indiscriminately in and around the product to kill everything else, thus increasing your yield of the actual crop that you've genetically modified, and increasing the money that the farmer or the organisation can receive or revenue generate. And, you know, just keep on using roundup and that's fine without really appreciating the impacts that you're bringing to light, I.e the residue effect and the health effect.
Nick: And the wider wider biodiversity effect. And also just just one point, it doesn't most of it doesn't really increase the farmer's revenue. It increases the revenue of the people that sell the seeds and own the patent on the seeds. It increases the revenue of the people that are selling the herbicide. It doesn't really benefit the farmer all that much. And and actually there's some quite high profile cases whereby farmers have suffered as a result of it or next door neighbours have suffered as a result of it and been sued for ownership and there's a again, there are associated with GM, there are much wider issues of sovereignty, food sovereignty, seed sovereignty. A very few number, small, and I think we're talking four companies in the world own 80, 85% of the seeds in the world.
Dr Rupy: 85%?
Nick: Something like that.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Nick: I mean it's huge. They they own them. They're patented. You can't swap them, you can't save save seeds from things you've grown using these seeds and then plant them on or they don't have seeds in them because they've been engineered not to have seeds in them. And so again, you can't carry on. So again, it's it's this concentration of what monopolization of of agriculture into a few very powerful corporate hands, which is is worrying. And um, sorry, I've got a little bit off track here. But again, there's been this growing movement of seed swaps. So coming up in in February for is CD Sunday where people get together who have grown fruit, vegetables and they swap their seeds and they trade heritage seeds and heirloom seeds and all this sort of thing, which I I like it. It's great. You know, if there's a CD Sunday near you, go go and check it out.
Dr Rupy: Is this something that you you we should be encouraging?
Nick: I think more widely, we should be encouraging everyone to grow their own food where they possibly can, but we should also be encouraging community food growing. We should be encouraging food growing in schools. You know, we we need to connect with our food and what's going on. And there are some really good examples of it. Incredible Edible. You've got a book behind you. Really inspirational. We we work with them very closely in Lambeth, for example, where they were growing food on housing estates there, but that all fitted in with our pesticide free towns campaign because, you know, they want and Lambeth has gone pesticide free.
Dr Rupy: Pam Pam Warhurst, she's been on the pod. She's a personal hero of mine.
Nick: She's inspirational. I was on a I was on a panel with her a few weeks ago in in Wales. And yeah, I mean, she is inspirational.
Dr Rupy: Still full of energy. I remember visiting Todmorden, uh, and her doing a little tour of the incredible edible and and uh, you know, the stuff that was on her Ted talk, which is amazing.
Nick: Yeah. But but actually in terms of, you know, we're talking about organic and avoiding residues, well, a great way of avoiding residues is if you can grow your own food or as a community, you can have a space to grow your own food because then you know exactly what's gone onto it or what hasn't gone onto it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Nick: But I think the idea that this disconnect from food is is is really damaging and I think that that needs to be addressed. And there's a lot of scope for changing things.
Dr Rupy: I totally agree. Um, let's talk a bit more about this idea of pesticides and ill health because, you know, it's something that I know you wanted to get across. And I think we've veered towards this being more of a farming issue rather than actually a health issue. And I think this is an important message that PAN is about and and you're about as well. So let's talk about some of these health effects of of pesticides more broadly.
Nick: Yeah. Uh, so, I mean, pesticides have been linked to to so many different things. I mean, cancer is is probably the the most high profile thing that that people understand. So, for example, there have been some, not just one or two, but hundreds and thousands of of legal cases in the US about, um, people who have used glyphosate contracting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, for example. So that that's a that's a a good one, but there are studies have shown that farmers, farm workers who are exposed to pesticides have higher levels of depression. So mental health issues as well. Uh, I think one of the most high profile in the UK was what can only be described as the scandal of the sheep dippers being poisoned by organophosphate pesticides. This happened back in back in the 80s. Um, sheep scab was identified as a problem, UK sheep and we couldn't export our sheep to France unless it was treated. So the government mandated that farmers, sheep farmers, hill farmers for the most part, had to dip their sheep in organophosphates. Organophosphates are are incredibly poisonous, incredibly powerful, which we have for the most part banned from use. But this was mandated to them. The the health and safety, um, advice was lacking. They were they were advised to wear rubber aprons which actually soaked this stuff up and increased their dermal exposure. And we've seen hundreds, hundreds of people, um, subsequently with, so with nerve nerve damage, Parkinson's, early onset Parkinson's, destroyed, died. I've met many of these farmers who have died over the years, their their families suffer from it because it's not just those who are exposed to it, it's then it's the people who are washing the the stuff that they've they've worn. Um, there's never been any redress for that either, but it's it's one of the few instances where exposure to a specific pesticide has been linked to a specific health outcome. That was sort of nerve damage, degenerative, degenerative nerve nerve damage and as I say, Parkinson's and motor neuron issues. Um, it's very difficult, this is a problem. It's difficult to identify an exposure to a health outcome because of the the vast range of different things that we are exposed to.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, because what I guess what you're describing are high profile cases where there's been a clear exposure in a high dose compared to my exposure, your exposure on a day-to-day basis in 2025.
Nick: Exactly, yeah.
Dr Rupy: And and I guess perhaps before we go into what the potential health consequences are, maybe you could give me and our listeners an idea of, okay, Dr Rupy in 2025, what is my general exposure to pesticides compared to Dr Rupy in 2000, Dr Rupy in 1975? Like, has our burden of pesticide exposure increased linearly over that time period as a result of extra use of of these chemicals?
Nick: I'm not sure if that's that's something that can be answered. I think perhaps your exposure scenario will have changed.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: In terms of the variety and the toxicity of of pesticides because again, they they've changed over time. So the things that were being used in 1975 would be very different to the things that are being used in in 2025. Not not all of them, but a lot of them. Um, again, it's hard to say. I mean, I think you're probably exposed to a greater variety. There has been, there are increases in pesticide use, there are increases in pesticide toxicity. Some would argue that, well, and actually it's true, uh, that the weight of pesticide active substances has halved in the last 20 years, which it has, but that's as a result of it becoming more toxic. So where you used to need a bucket of the stuff, you can use a thimble of the stuff, doesn't mean it's a better scenario.
Dr Rupy: Sure.
Nick: Uh, and some active substances, I'll mention glyphosate again because it's a big year for glyphosate because it's up for re-approval in the UK in December. Um, overall use, and this is including, this is agriculture, but it's also including towns and cities where where it's used on our sort of parks and playgrounds and schools, hospitals, uh, and also in people's homes and gardens. Overall, for the fairly limited data we've got, use in the last 30 years has gone up by 600%. In some sectors, it's much more. In the arable sector, it's 900% increase in that same time frame. So pesticide use has gone up. There's no question about it. And I think you can extrapolate from that that our exposure to pesticides has risen.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So it's a difficult question to answer because whilst the dose of any one particular pesticide may not have overall increased, the exposure to multiple different pesticides at different doses, some lower, some higher, has actually, uh, increased.
Nick: Probably.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: I think it's about as definite as I can get on that.
Dr Rupy: Totally. Um, we've danced around the subject of glyphosate a bit. Let's talk about glyphosate, otherwise known as Roundup. Um, I ignorantly thought that this was more of an issue in America where they tend to talk about it quite a bit, particularly health influencers, doctors, etc. I don't think I appreciated the exposure of glyphosate in the UK. I actually thought it was something that we didn't use in the UK farming system, let alone in our back gardens. So what is glyphosate and why should we be worried?
Nick: It's interesting you should say that because personally, so I've been working on this for the last 17, not glyphosate, but pesticides for 17 years. When I first started, the public had no idea about, you know, they couldn't name a pesticide. And when you talk to them, apart from yourself, but there's many others I assume as well. They can now name two, glyphosate and the ones that kill bees. Which is a step in the right direction.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick: Yeah. So glyphosate is a is a weed killer, herbicide. Uh, it is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It might be the most widely used and popular pesticide overall in the world. Um, first came on the market around 1974. Um, and and it's often been touted as being safe, which many of these things are at first. Um, you know, so safe you can drink it. Although I've never seen anybody who has suggested you could drink it actually drink it, and I certainly wouldn't recommend anybody do that to prove a point. Um, so yeah, it's I mean it's used everywhere. I mean, the the reason being it's very good at what it does. Um, just a bit of clarification. So glyphosate is the active substance. Roundup is a product that contains glyphosate. And there are actually many other products that now contain glyphosate. So it's not just Roundup, but people know Roundup because of the links to Monsanto and you know, all that sort of thing and and GM and Roundup ready. So glyphosate itself is is an active substance, but it's never used on its own. It's used with a range of other things to make it work better. So surfactants will help it stick to the plant and kill it for longer. So it kills the plant. It it works by, um, disrupting the shikimate, I'm going to get a bit technical here, the shikimate pathway within plants.
Dr Rupy: I've heard about this, yeah.
Nick: Yeah, within plants, but so it disrupts that and kills the plant.
Dr Rupy: And do we have a shikimate pathway?
Nick: Well, this is the interesting question, or this is one of the interesting questions. We don't. Uh-huh. However, our gut biomes do. And glyphosate ingestion interferes with that and can then therefore negatively impact gut and stomach health. Yeah, it's widely used. It's used in agriculture, used particularly in the arable sector. One of those main uses is I think called pre-harvest desiccation where it's applied to dry and kill the crop to make it before it's harvested to make it easier to harvest. It's used widely in the I think called the amenity sector, which is non-agricultural uses. So our streets, pavements, parks, playgrounds, used by councils, uh, and it's used by people in their homes and gardens. Um, quite like to talk about the towns and cities stuff separately a bit later on, would be great. Um, so yeah, safe. And then there have been studies back in 2015, the, uh, World Health Organisation classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Nick: Which so alarm bells ringing, although there had been other research to show that it was harmful prior to that. So that was quite a big move which which, um, really ignited the whole discussion about glyphosate and and the safety of it and whether we could trust that or not. Um, and there has been an awful lot of research being done on glyphosate and its impacts not just on human health, but also more widely on biodiversity and what it does to aquatic ecosystems, what it does to soil organisms, you know, its potential impact on bees. But yeah, but as far as people are concerned, there are a range of different things that can do. So it has been linked with a prevalence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And the court cases in in the US, uh, sort of groundskeepers, people that have been using it not even in agriculture, have sued and been awarded huge sums of money, um, because it's been linked with their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the fact that the company manufacturing it didn't put warning labels on the on the product to say this is a carcinogen. Evidence here showing, well, a lot of peer-reviewed science to show that actually this is doing this, but also things like oxidative stress, DNA damage, um, increasing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Uh, some studies have have linked it to birth defects and there's been a lot of quite interesting sort of campaigning, uh, testing people's urine. So there was a big one where a lot of MEPs were tested, but we've had one, friends of the earth have done one and and others have done them in the UK. Most people will probably have glyphosate in their urine. Um, and a study I was looking at the other day is that those who do have glyphosate in their urine have, uh, increased biomarkers for a range of cancers as well. Uh, all that information's going out there. And I'll just a little bit of a, a pointer, we will soon be having a dedicated web page about glyphosate and and what's going on with that. Um, so again, back to this precautionary principle, there is more than enough science out there, uh, good, solid, robust science to say, well, air on the side of caution and and we should not be using this. Last year, the European Union reapproved its use with a couple of minor restrictions on it. Um, and for 10 years instead of 15 years. So that's a nod to the fact that there might be something wrong with it. My our colleagues in Pesticide Action Network Europe have taken a legal challenge to say that actually some of the key toxicity data, some of the key health studies were ignored by the regulator when the approval was given. We've got the same issue about re-approval coming up this year in the UK. So again, we're going to, you know, push forward as much evidence as we can to say, look, at the very least, the stuff should not be available for the public to buy. It shouldn't be sprayed in our towns and cities and certainly not in our schools or parks or playgrounds or picnic areas or whatever.
Dr Rupy: Putting on our tin hats, uh, in conspiracy corner here, um, do you think it's because members of central government are compromised by lobbying groups of these big corporations that actually produce these glyphosate containing products?
Nick: I think, not just glyphosate, but I think more widely, if we talk about pesticides more widely, the lobbying by the industry is big. They they don't, they they devote an awful lot of money to it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, because you're a 15-person organisation just to be clear.
Nick: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Based out in Brighton.
Nick: With with very limited resources.
Dr Rupy: With very limited resources compared to a billion-dollar company.
Nick: Yeah, so the lobbying budgets are are huge and they do it, whether that's at EU level or UK level, there's no question that that goes on. Um, and then there are other voices, uh, sort of in the farming world as well who would support this, that sort of thing. So yeah, there are powerful voices about it. And it's the trouble with, one of the problems with science is you can never get really a black and white answer. It's about weight of evidence and but you're never going to get a definitive answer about any any one thing necessarily. Um, so it's about who they listen to and the science that they listen to. And then there are, you know, there are other other issues about, you know, the regulatory system and how that's done. Um, I mean, I could talk a little bit about what's happened to us in the UK since we've left the EU, which is we don't really have a regulatory system.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Nick: Not yet. We don't have a strategy, we don't have a system. We just what we should be doing is following what the EU does because that's the easiest thing to do. And ultimately our biggest trading partner is the EU and we want to still produce to them, so keep to their standards. But we're starting to see divergence. We're starting to see divergence in and this is a weakening of standards in some pesticide residue crop combinations. We're seeing a divergence and I think that that is that seems to be deliberate and is about trade and and that sort of global trade and these up in the air plans for trade links with these far-flung countries. So I think that's being done, yeah, positively by them, but not in a positive way, but you know, deliberately. The other one is we are sort of, there's a divergence in what active substances are allowed to be used. So we're seeing the EU taking a few out and we've just extended them. And that's not deliberate, that's because we have a lack of capacity. We don't just don't have the people to to make these decisions, to review these active substances. So there are some serious issues, I think, ahead and uh,
Dr Rupy: And as a listener, listening to this, you know, someone who can write into their local council or their parish council, are there any other things that they can do beyond that to try and enable their voice to be heard with with regard to use of these chemicals in local towns and cities?
Nick: Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of things that people can can get involved in on our website, available at www.pan-uk.org. Um, you know, writing, signing up. But then at a more practical level, so we've seen, again, this is getting back to this sort of idea of communities and people doing it for themselves because the people aren't. So a lot of places where streets have got together to opt out of being sprayed. And gone out and done the weeding themselves.
Dr Rupy: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick: Which is is great. And it's a way of not only getting the job done and saving the council some money, uh, but also of of sort of socialising and getting to know your neighbours, but also getting that understanding of what's going growing on your streets because not everything that grows on streets is bad.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Nick: There are a lot of good things. We've got a really great guide actually on we stop calling them weeds, we call them pavement plants. Again, which people can download for free. But there's some really fascinating stuff growing right next to us that doesn't need to be eradicated. I mean some of the things you might want to get rid of, like a rhododendron growing through a wall. But other things, you know, they're, you know, some of them, I think in Lambeth it was when they stopped spraying, you know, you've suddenly got, um, red list plant species, red list endangered plant species popping up through the cracks of the pavements in Brixton. You know, I mean, it's it's amazing what's out there if if you look. So yeah, people can do it for themselves and take it into their own or they can start a campaign or or whatever. We've got loads of resources for people to come and look at from, you know, food residues to, you know, pesticides in towns and which supermarkets are doing good things or not. So we we have loads of it's all on there. It's all free for people to use as well, you know. Everything we have is downloadable, viewable or whatever.
Dr Rupy: In terms of the urine tests that you mentioned, um, I personally am interested in doing tests to determine my current level of exposure to a number of different, uh, pollutants, you know, whether it's PFOs or pesticides or, um, uh, pollutants in our environment that we ingest through breathing, um, toxic air. Do you think these are interesting tests that people can actually take action on if they are found to be exposed to high levels of some of these pesticides by perhaps switching to organic?
Nick: Yeah, I mean, again, it's it's really difficult because of the sort of the paucity of information. We don't really know what the background levels are anyway on on many things. I mean, we have seen, there's some interesting stuff. I think it was up in in Washington State in the US. It may be done elsewhere as well. where they did some testing before, you know, people on a normal diet. And I think it was particularly for glyphosate, but also some other pesticides. And they switched them to an organic diet for a month and they tested them again and there was a massive reduction. So there's there is some and I I think the the difficult is what is it telling you?
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Nick: You know, we we know they're there. What's it telling you? And again, it's it's going back to linking it with health outcomes and whether you can or you can't. The one thing I would say is these things shouldn't be in our bodies. And if anybody had the choice, I'm pretty certain they would say no. So what in effect, all this is is chemical trespass. It's chemical trespass of our bodies and it's it's not right. Um, what we can do about it and what it means when you've got it in there is again, I think open to interpretation. But again, you've got the thing I mentioned about the the cancer biomarkers being associated with the presence of of glyphosate, um, in urine. I think, you know, there are warning signs, definitely. But again, each individual is reaction to anything is very different, which again is why the risk assessment is is flawed because it's it's the risk assessment for the average and there isn't any such thing as an average person.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. There are going to be certain people that are going to be uniquely susceptible to even small amounts of these.
Nick: Absolutely. And there are, there's no question about it. But again, certainly in the UK and in many other places, getting recognition that somebody's ill health is a result of pesticide exposure is really, really difficult. Um, GPs are not, I mean, you you would know, I I don't imagine you were trained in recognising the symptoms of pesticide exposure either acute or chronic.
Dr Rupy: Oh, so acute through medicine, like, you know, organophosphate exposure, but that that's a rarity that not many people are ever going to come across.
Nick: But certainly not the the chronic conditions.
Dr Rupy: Sure. No, no, no.
Nick: And so and that's a failing. And yeah, so I mean, I've spent years writing to a succession of health ministers. I haven't done the newest one yet. to say, look, pesticides aren't, you know, they're a health issue. And they should be considered as a health issue. And our the response has always been, oh no, pesticides aren't a health issue, they're a farming issue. It's like, well, that's not true. I think that would certainly be the first step, uh, in actually starting to understand what's going on. And and I think there needs to be a recognition that pesticides are a health issue, not a farming issue. Not just a farming issue. And France, for example, their Ministry of Health is involved in the issue of pesticides, where they're used, what can be used. And certain, um, diseases, certain sort of cancers and and other things are considered occupational, uh, well, occupational hazards because of exposure to pesticides. So there's a recognition there and I I think that is desperately needed here.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Nick: There's no effective monitoring, there's no effective reporting system. And and because there's no recognition that pesticides are a health issue, there never will be. And until that's addressed, I think. So again, we would really like to see the the health minister say, yeah, okay, well, let's let's get on board with this.
