Pesticides left on fruits and vegetables are so negligible that they pose almost no cancer danger, an expert panel said, concluding people would be at greater risk for failing to eat their apples and greens.

Large and frequent doses of pesticides are believed to be toxic, but most people are exposed to only tiny amounts in fruits and vegetables.

Motivated by public worries, a panel of cancer experts formed in 1994 and reviewed at least 50 published studies between 1981 and 1996 on pesticides to find out if there was cause for alarm. "A diverse diet that has plenty of fruits and vegetables is very important in reducing cancer, " said Dr. Clark Heath of the American Cancer Society. "Compared to that, the risk of cancer from manmade chemicals is negligible."

For the average person, there's nothing to fear, the panel said in a study to be published Saturday in the journal Cancer.

"It is extremely unlikely that pesticides in the diet have any meaningful contribution to cancer rates," stated Len Ritter, a Canadian environmental biology professor on the panel and executive director of the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres.

Tobacco use, blamed for one in five deaths in the United States, should remain the priority in the fight against cancer, the panel said.

"For whatever reason,...people feel more concern for risks over which they have no personal control than for risks associated with their familiar everyday life habits," Heath wrote in an editorial.

11/15/97