Talk:Pesticide residue

Classmate's Comments

Good Job! You have really made the article easily understandable to the general public, which is something that is really important on a Wikipedia page. I felt like you conveyed the information well, and it was definitely well organized. That being said I have 2 main comments as well as some small things.

The first main comment is that I would love to see more detail on some of the information. For example, in the health impacts you said that there is a possibility that low exposure to pesticides causes cancer. I thought you could maybe go into what kinds of cancer are most associated with pesticide residue, and what mechanisms within the cell they use. Some articles I found that could be relevant are:

These are both about pesticide residue and breast cancer:

• http://oem.bmj.com/content/60/5/348.abstract
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2022666/

Health effect associated with pesticide residue you could discuss is the Endocrine disrupting element. Some articles which study this effect are:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076011000458
• http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/56/23/5403.long (this talks about estrogenic effects and cancer implications!)

Finally, I actually found that the assertion of pesticide residues causing cancer is somewhat debated. These articles either disagree, or question the ability of testing the correlation between the two. In order to keep a NPOV I feel like you might want to include some of their main arguements into the page:

• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0142(19971115)80:10%3C2019::AID-CNCR21%3E3.0.CO;2-Z/full
• http://potency.berkeley.edu/pdfs/handbook.pesticide.toxicology.pdf

The second main comment is that I feel like the first section on regulation in the different countries feels a little out of place. Perhaps you could put it towards the end? Also I feel like you need a bit more of an introductory paragraph before you jump right into the health effects. Maybe you could go into more detail about what pesticide residues are, how they get into the food, why they stay there, do companies wash the fruit before it gets sold, what are the major pesticides found in residues, that sort of thing. I feel like this would give the article a better lead in. But all of your writing is very clear and concise, and I feel like it is easily accessible to any reader. I just feel it would benefit from a bit better organization and some more information.

Now just some small things:

• "They are used in many developing countries to prevent the spread of malaria…" this sentence feels a bit forced. I see that you are trying to say that pesticides are useful (and keep NPOV) but perhaps you could put some of the benefits of pesticides in the intro? I don't know. When it is in the health section it just seems a bit weird to me.

• Don't abbreviate CNS, because not everyone will know what you are talking about. Also you might want to link CNS too.

• You should explain the "clean 15" more when you explain the dirty dozen, because it can be a little confusing.

• The list of for the dirty dozen and clean fifteen creates a lot of white space and looks kind of awkward. Perhaps you could just list them with commas instead of bullet point? Also they all should have links

• Some things to link:

Neurotoxins

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),

autism

CNS

cancers

bioaccumulation

all the fruits and vegetables on the clean 15/dirty dozen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Silverglass (talk • contribs) 21:26, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Comment #2

Hey Luhiz, Your article is off to a great start. I think the wealth of information presented provides a good overview of pesticide residues. I also think that you write simply enough for the average wikipedia user to stumble upon your site and understand it. You also do a good job of distinguishing pesticide residue from pesticides, which is already on wikipedia and is very long.

Some things to think about: One of the things that I noticed right away is that there are a lot of key words that you can link in your article. You can link the different diseases you talk about, as well as all the chemical (basically all the scientific terms that would be useful to click on and quickly read about while reading your article) Just add term linked like you did elsewhere in your article.

Next I think you should add a little bit to the regulation section of your article. I'd like to see a little bit about what pesticides are regulated by all the countries, which are regulated by only some etc.. so that similarities and differences can be seen. I think it would be a good idea to maybe take a look at one common pesticide and include how it is regulated by each country, just to have a concrete example. This website also has some good information about regulation in the US: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/stprf.htm#registration I think it would be good to talk about Pesticide registration and how the tolerance levels are set. According to the website the questions below play a factor: • the toxicity of the pesticide and its break-down products • how much of the pesticide is applied and how often • how much of the pesticide (i.e., the residue) remains in or on food by the time it is marketed and prepared

A little more on what types of pesticide residues cause cancer, and what types of cancer would be good too. Are these causal or correlative links? literature review of pesticides that cause cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9498903

When you say lipophilic maybe say that this means they can be stored in human body fat for a long time..

Finally, I found a little more on the development effects in pregnant mothers. I think one of the big ones is lower IQ, I found a bunch of websites with studies about this. Here are a few links:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/21/news/la-heb-pesticide-children-20110421 Pesticides + children with low IQ

http://www.marchofdimes.com/pregnancy/stayingsafe_indepth.html See can pesticides harm an unborn baby section. Tips on how to use pesticides safely if need to.

User:anthonna (talk —Preceding undated comment added 21:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC).

Just a quick comment, more to come! Check out this reference: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.114-a112a Also, EHP has an education section that might have some useful information to include in this article. Hakeleh (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)hakeleh