Just because you’re ‘eating green’ doesn’t mean you’re eating healthy.

On a warm Saturday afternoon, you and your friend head down to your favorite spot for lunch – Le Health Cafe. You sit at your regular table and give the waiter your usual order.

The waiter arrives with your meal, a big plate piled high with leafy greens, yellows and reds that makes you feel healthy just looking at it. The lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, spinach and peppers have been arranged into an edible masterpiece, served with a cool glass of water to wash it down.

You begin to eat without a second’s thought that this delicious salad could be slowly poisoning you.

Chances are good that many, if not all, of the ingredients in that salad were grown in an environment rich with pesticides. And the glass of water that came with the salad most likely came from the faucet in the kitchen.

The lettuce in that salad may contain several different types of pesticide residues. An Environmental Protection Agency study discovered that roughly 75 percent of all produce found in grocery stores tested positive for various pesticide residues.

The number could easily be higher, since the EPA can only test for less than half of the 496 pesticides identified as ‘likely to leave residues on food.’

Eating one salad will not give you leukemia, but repeated exposure over time does pose a significant health risk, especially when other sources of chemical intake are taken into consideration.

What about the water that came with the salad?

About half of the U.S. population gets its drinking water from ground-water sources, which are more likely to become contaminated than other sources.

According to a joint study by Cornell University and the Center for Environmental Research, more than 700 different chemicals compounds have been discovered in the groundwater throughout the U.S. At a minimum, more than 1.3 million Americans drink contaminated water every day.

How are these dangerous chemicals making their way into our water supply?

Its not terrorists, if that’s what you’re thinking.

In the U.S. alone, over one million pounds of pesticides are added to the environment every year. To give a tangible example, if this were put in to 100-pound sacks and laid end to end, it would wrap all the way around the globe.

The most potentially harmful and dangerous of these chemicals are what are called bioaccumulates. These compounds have a long half-life so it takes longer for them to leave the body than it does to get more exposure. The chemical slowly builds up until dangerous levels are reached in the body.

These chemicals, even if relatively harmless at lower levels of exposure, can be extremely hazardous when exposed over long periods of time.

A study by the Environmental Protection Agency found more than 19 percent of commercially grown lettuce from major grocery store chains to be contaminated with the bioaccumulative chemical

DDT which was banned from use more than 20 years ago.

The use of these bioaccumulates should be stopped immediately, as they pose the greatest health risk – particularly to the young.

Developing babies and children are most susceptible to the ill effects of chemical exposure. They take in larger amounts of chemicals relative to their body weight, and their still-developing organs are much more sensitive to even lower levels of exposure.

Babies are exposed to these chemicals through their mother’s circulatory system and from breast-feeding once they are born. This can lead to many neurological disorders and physical disabilities.

If all these chemicals are so bad, then why are they still in use today?

There is one simple answer: Money.

The U.S. chemical industry is a $450 billion annual goldmine. There are regulations in place for this industry, but they are by no means strict.

Chemical companies are only required to test for acute symptoms when working on a new chemical substance. There are currently more than 400 pesticides on the market that were registered before being tested to see if they caused cancer, birth defects or wildlife toxicity.

In 1978, new more accurate testing procedures were adopted to handle pesticides. However, all compounds that were approved prior to 1978 were allowed to continue being distributed and used.

There are inherent flaws in the procedures for implementing regulations. Using the current procedures in place in the U.S., it takes about 10 years to get a harmful chemical banned from use.

And if that’s not bad enough, when new regulations are being considered, the chemical industry will send in its ‘attack dogs’ – PR firms that attempt to discredit and dissuade people from any action that might adversely affect the industry’s profits. This seems to be done with little to no regard for the public’s safety.

When it comes to new chemical approval in the U.S., a chemical must be definitively shown to cause harm to stop it from reaching the market. The problem with this is that it takes time to prove harm; meanwhile the product is on store shelves and could be poisoning people with little noticeable immediate effects.

Many countries follow what is called the “Precautionary Principle” when it comes to chemical use. This principle is basically a technical version of the old motto: “Better safe than sorry.” When applied to chemicals, it means that the chemicals should be proven to do no harm before they can be sold, distributed or used.

This would perhaps be a better approach than our laissez-faire market-driven profit-first attitude toward potentially harmful substances. But this will most likely never happen, unless there is a major public outcry for change.

Next time you are shopping at Vons or Ralphs give a little thought to what might be covering those fruits and veggies. If you don’t decide to buy organically grown produce, at least give them a good cleaning before you chow down on that “healthy food.”