The toxic dose is a vague term. You may not die from exposure, but you can still have effects, such as infertility, cancers or endocrine disruption.

▲

fasterik 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If we really want to be precise, we should talk about parts per million (PPM). Scientific research establishes a safe level of consumption in terms of PPM, below which there are no detectable health effects. Generally when you see alarmism about "pesticides found in food" they're orders of magnitude below the PPM that would have any effect on human health.

▲

SchemaLoad 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

We have seen over and over again chemicals which are "safe to consume" or "not that bad" actually do have very severe effects. It's just very hard to link cause and effect. When someone dies of cancer we can't pinpoint it to coming from the pesticide on the blueberries they ate a few months ago.

We have all these terrible illnesses that we ascribe to bad luck, and then all of these new chemicals we haven't fully studied yet being sprayed on everything.

	▲	fasterik 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		"Safe to consume" is always relative. If I drink chlorine at 1000 PPM it's going to kill me, but drinking it at 1 PPM (roughly the amount added to drinking water in many places, and well below the level in swimming pools) is considered harmless to humans and kills pathogens, so it's a net positive. It's possible that chlorine at 1 PPM causes cancer, but that's a claim that would require evidence. The same argument applies to pesticide or any other substance. Without talking about specific numbers, it's just speculation.

▲

Saline9515 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly, scientific research established that DDT was perfectly safe, too! Scientists even used to eat it to "prove" that it was safe.

In reality it depends, being biology, "safe level" is also very relative since you don't know every effect the substance has on the body.

That's why pesticides and other chemicals such as bisphenols are regularly phased out, since effects can appear long after "scientific research" established it was "safe". Or it can affect certain populations, such as farmers, who get a high dose, or children, who are more sensitive than adults.

Others, such DDT, lead or cadmium, are accumulated in the body over a long period, and then start to show effects, even when the person has stopped eating it. Or can find their way later the food chain: Inuits would get poisoned when eating polar bear's meat, that was full of DDT from fields on the other side of the globe.