Any other OP exposure in food, at home, at school, in water or in the air will only push that child's daily exposure to OPs further into the zone that the EPA already considers unsafe. Just over 55,000 children exposed to methyl parathion exceed the safe dose by a factor of 10, and 2,400 exceed it by a factor of 100. Put another way, if there's any methyl parathion in a child's food, there is about a 50-50 chance that the child is getting an unsafe dose. Almost 8 percent of the kids who eat methyl parathion in their food go over the safe limit by a factor of 10 or more. These three foods, derived from two crops, account for 80 percent of the unsafe methyl parathion exposures each day.
Grapes appear to be unique among high-risk foods.
This is quite different than the apples, peaches, and pears, where just 11 to 36 percent of children exposed to an unsafe dose exceeded the RfD by a factor of ten or more. Virtually any dose of methyl parathion is unsafe for children. Apples and apple products put huge numbers of children at risk because they are consumed by large numbers of children. Eating grapes exposed children to the highest doses of methyl parathion because it is more common for children to eat a large amount of grapes over the course of a day than it is to eat a large volume of apples. Methyl parathion exposure is concentrated in just a few foods that are important sources of nutrition for young children.