It's difficult to determine the health impact of pesticides due to factors like long latency periods as described here. An absence of evidence for the harm of pesticides in fruits and veg isn't evidence of absence.
In the United States, pesticides costs several billion in public health, groundwater contamination, crop loss and pesticide resistance according to Wikipedia. I am interested in the intersection of cognitive epidemiology with agricultural pollution and diet in particular and pesticides cause cognitive dysfunction and contribute to Dementia and Parkinsons risk. What does this mean in terms of choosing to grow or eat organic produce?
Importantly, I have significant private knowledge of non-reporting of adverse effects from pesticides in agriculture in university's for studies sponsored by pesticide manufacturers and associations affiliated with pesticide manufacturers. THIS is my strongest reason for only eating produce with a skin I can peel, since I'm not confident in the process seperating organic from non organic produce or their availability.
Note, there are also studies indicating city pollution gives dog's a degree of brain damage. I'd stay away from cities too.
Although Wikipedia, (and I haven't searched google or research databases on this question), doesn't say insect repellant is harmful, I would hypothesise and assume from the mechanism of action that its terrible.
In fact, this worry is one of the only reasons I don't travel to those countries where one 'ought to wear' insect repellant constantly to avoid dengue fever and such, despite many attractions like altitude, culture, cheap cost of living, new langauge, new people and cheap hookers.
Spare a thought for the farmers. If pesticides became less dangerous, farming would be even less profitable. Rates of illness associated with pesticide and herbicide use in agricultural workers is obscene, but farming simply isn't a competitive business without non-'organic' pest and weed control, except in exceptional crop types/strains, highly biosecure regions, in very-pro organic markets, where there is minimal market access by competitive foreign exporters.
The other day I attended a seminar on market gardening in my state and got some notes. Doesn't seem like small scale farming is that sensible.
I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food-- the arguments I've seen on the subject have been theoretical/aesthetic.
I'm interested in anything in the range from personal stories to scientific studies, but would prefer to avoid extremely general arguments or claims that people who prefer one or the other are demonstrating character defects.
Edited to add: Thanks for the replies. I'm hoping for experiments which test the effects of food produced in various ways on organisms, especially multi-cellular organisms. It was interesting to find out that plants which have to fight off insects for themselves have more mutagens.
The mutation experiment is very cute, but it leaves out the possibility of damage that isn't related to mutation-- for example, hormonal effects. Also, if it's done on a standard bacteria acquiring the ability to make a particular nutrient, this might not be a test for mutation in general.
I realize experiments on organic vs. conventional would be difficult, especially if you're tracking human health. It would be very hard to avoid confounding factors like other lifestyle factors and income.
"Conventional food" is actually a large blob of a concept-- different pesticides, fertilizers, etc. are used on different foods at different times, so finding out what people are actually exposed to would be difficult.