Worrisome, but I didnt want to sound the alarm without checking into it further. So I did some Google searching looking for the same warning from some other source. Found it from National Geographic and that's good enough for me to consider the story to be confirmed.
The troublesome chemical showed up in plastic bags imported from China, but not in bags of local (Spain) manufacture? I wish I had more confidence that the matter would be properly handled and fixed by China. But I've not seen any tendency toward openness in China.
In case you need more to worry about, here's a 17 minute TED talk on some common pesticides in our environment. You say you aren't worried about frogs? Well, you probably should be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X9NFPZGyDPg
What should you and I do about these problems? Alas, I haven't a clue about what to do. A sternly worded letter to your congress-person (who likely is heavily under the influence of some big agricultural chemical company) would be a beginning, but I've not got much more respect left for our government than I have for that of China.
Am I the only one who has noticed that the food labels track most bad things in milli-grams (mg) but trans-fats on the label are tracked in grams (g)? In case you don't remember, 1 g = 1000 mg. Anything under 500mg of trans-fat in a "serving" is loudly touted as zero grams of trans-fat per serving by the power of rounding down to the nearest whole number of grams. And there are some pretty funny notions of "servings" to be found on those labels. Muffins from my local super-market come in packs of 4 muffins, zero grams of transfat per serving, but a serving is 1/3 of a muffin. Makes me wonder if 1/2 a muffin has enough trans-fat in it that they'd have to round it up to 1g on the label.
Dietary guidelines for trans-fat is to keep the amount that you eat each day as low as possible. Heck, even the guidelines for sodium allow 1500 mg/day of sodium as a recommended daily allowance and 300mg/day of cholesterol. (Speaking of which, have you looked at the nutrition facts for a McDonalds egg and sausage biscuit? 1170 mg of sodium in one. 250 mg of cholesterol in one. But if you are hungry, one of those isn't much of a breakfast. Advice: don't make a habit of McDonald's for breakfast.
http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/fat/transfat.html
Now if our government really had our best interest in mind, wouldn't it push the food company's to report tran-fats in mg (like they do for cholesterol and sodium)? But does that happen? No. Obviously way too controversial a matter? Right up there with identifying which products contain GMO corn.
Sigh.
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