Strawberries and cream at Wimbledon next week could have an unlooked-for extra ingredient - an illegal pesticide.
Government figures released yesterday showed that UK grown strawberries contained dicoful, which is not approved for use on these crops but can be used to kill aphids. It is similar to long banned DDT and is a suspected hormone disrupter, which can cause sexual abnormalities and cancer.
Imported fruit and vegetables were also above legal limits, according to the pesticide resid-ues committee. Organophosphate pesticides known to cause brain damage were found in grapes, starfruit, nectarines and peaches.
Although individual doses of pesticide were not enough to harm humans, all soft citrus fruits contained "unacceptable" levels of residues above legal limits, the committee said.
A Friends of the Earth's campaigner, Sandra Bell, said: "While the committee tell us that each individual dose will not harm us, no tests are done on the cocktail effect of so many chemicals. They tell us that for our health we should eat five portions of fruit or veg a day. On these results we could get five doses of pesticide."
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Monday June 24 2002
In a report headed Pesticide fear for fruit eaters we said that strawberries and cream at Wimbledon could have an unlooked for extra ingredient - an illegal pesticide. The article referred to residues of dicofol found in samples tested last year in a general survey by the Pesticide Safety Directorate. There are no illegal pesticide residues in the strawberries at Wimbledon. The Wimbledon strawberries are all supplied to the official caterers, FMC, from one source, Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent. Dicofol, which was withdrawn from sale in July last year, has not been used by them for several years.