There presently is "no evidence... that the extremely small amounts of certain pesticides which may be found in our food or in our general environment cause us any harm," Mitchell R. Zavon, MD, told the American Medical Association Congress on Environmental Health Problems, May 1-2 in Chicago.
Zavon, associate professor of industrial medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said that the effect of pesticides on our general environment will probably require many years of research to evaluate.
He commented that "hysteria and politics have entered into the discussion of pesticides so that it becomes difficult at times for rational scientific objectivity to prevail."
Pesticide intoxication actually is an uncommon occurrence, Zavon said, and the type of pesticide ingested varies with the environment.
He said that these criteria must be satisfied to arrive at a presumptive diagnosis of pesticide-caused illness: