The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday urged the public to remain diligent about thoroughly washing vegetables and fruits before eating them, after recent random sampling detected pesticide and fungicide residues in 53 out of 453 food products.
The majority of the contaminated products were beans and small, leafy vegetables, including dwarf beans, honey peas, snow peas, spinach, mint leaves and edible amaranth, the results showed.
The results showed that the most frequent contaminants were insecticide, fipronil (found in eight items) and difenoconazole (found in five), a fungicide.
Three other contaminants — dimethomorph, cypermethrin and profenophos — were found in four agricultural products each.
Fipronil is classified by the WHO as a Class II moderately hazardous pesticide with an acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0.0002 milligrams (mg) per kilogram (kg) of body weight, which means an adult weighing 50kg is advised to ingest no more than 0.01mg of the substance a day.
However, it was banned by the EU in July last year.
The highest level of fipronil — 0.07 parts per million — was found in an edible rape product that is currently used by Keelung’s Wu Lun Elementary School.
Doctors have said that long-term exposure to fipronil could cause damage to a person’s liver and kidneys and increase the risk of thyroid tumors.
“We have told local health departments to trace the origins of the deficient products and to handle the cases in accordance with the laws... In the meantime, consumers are advised to wash leafy vegetables with running water before soaking them in water for 10 to 20 minutes and then washing them at least two more times,” the FDA said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching