DDT Traces Found In Some Green Tea Brands

Title: DDT IN YOUR GREEN TEA?
Author: Frances Cerra Whittelsey, In These Times
Source: Alternet (8/8/00)
Article# 2137
Hope Nemiroff thought she was living the healthiest lifestyle possible.
After being diagnosed with cancer in 1995 and having a tiny tumor removed
from her breast, she had changed her ways. She walked. She went for
hypnosis and did yoga to help reduce her stress levels. She switched to a
mostly organic, vegetable-based diet. She drank a dozen cups of green tea
every day.
Determined to learn everything she could about her disease, Nemiroff, now
58, also became president of the Mid-Hudson Breast Health Action Project,
an advocacy group in New York. Impressed by her efforts, her oncologist
hired her to help with a study of the relationship between DDT and breast
cancer. Although she was not a subject of the study, Nemiroff says, "I got
curious. I wanted to see what [the blood] of somebody like me would look
like who was living a healthy lifestyle."

Her blood, it turned out, contained traces of DDT. And when she later
investigated what part of her diet might be contaminated with the
pesticide, the answer jolted her. A laboratory analysis found DDT in her
green tea.

While overall tea sales in the United States have remained flat during the
past decade, cancer concern has propelled the wholesale value of green tea
consumed here from $2 million in 1990 to $25 million in 1999.

- Link to the Full Story : http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9590