MEETING ABSTRACT Open Access Is organic diet really necessary for children?

Pesticides are a wide class of phytochemicals commonly used in conventional agriculture. Most of them are charac-terized by being very toxic to humans and persistent in the environment, and represent long-term dangers as they biomagnify up the food-chain. Humans, and particularly breastfed babies, are at the top of the food-chain since they ingest more food and water per unit body weight than adults, so any exposure is greater in proportion to their size. For such a reason, dietary intake of pesticides represents the major source of exposure for infants and children. Since they are growing so quickly, infants and young children are more susceptible to the effects of pesti-cide exposure than adults [1]. Their internal organs are still developing and maturing and the enzymatic, meta-bolic, and immune systems are less efficient than those o