How worrying is this?
Felt states in the report that among the various substances recovered, there are on average seven residues that come from pesticides with endocrine disrupting properties, four to five pesticides are said to have a negative effect on fertility and four are toxic to our nervous system. To reach this conclusion, Felt was guided by the “Insecticide Properties Database.”
“There is nothing wrong with this database per se,” says Professor Jan Tytgat. “The database gives a kind of classification of purely qualitative pesticides. But what this database does not do is perform a quantitative risk assessment,” says Tetgat, who points out that there are other studies that have looked at exposure to active substances in animals, and that there are criteria by which an assessment can be made. “I looked at the concentrations of some of the substances and found no problems with toxicity,” says the toxicologist. “Humans ingest dust every day, but it is on the order of micrograms.” We would have to absorb a hundred million times more dust before there would be a problem.
Professor and expert in the field of crop protection, Peter Spanogy (Ugent), also confirms that there is a difference between the risks of pesticides and exposure to them. “Dust has almost no weight, we ingest about ten micrograms of dust every day,” says Spanogi. “The concentrations mentioned in the report are values found in one gram of dust. We eat so little dust that its concentrations are minimal, so there is no cause for concern.
DDT forever
“Although the study says nothing about risk from a quantitative point of view, it is very interesting from a qualitative point of view,” Tetgat concludes. “You can get a great view of the active ingredients present in the fabric sample. The combination of active ingredients is particularly interesting, as very little research has been done on this. I would like to investigate this further.”
Titgat also finds it remarkable to find residues of pesticides, which have now been banned for a while. For example, DDT, banned since the 1970s, was found in 34 percent of the samples. “PFAS molecules also break down very poorly, so they can still be found,” Tytgat compares it to PFAS, the so-called “forever chemical.”
According to Titgat, aquatic organisms bear the brunt. “They will become intoxicated much sooner than humans. The aquatic toxicity of some of these active substances far outweighs the risks to humans.”
