The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides

The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides ranks pesticide contamination for 47 popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of 87,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 2000 to 2007 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Nearly all the studies used to create the list test produce after it has been rinsed or peeled. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.
The six measures of contamination we used were:

Percent of the samples tested with detectable pesticides
Percent of the samples with two or more pesticides
Average number of pesticides found on a sample
Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found
Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample
Number of pesticides found on the commodity in total

The philosophy behind the guide is simple: give consumers the information they need to make choices to reduce pesticides in their diets. In this spirit, the Guide does not present a complex assessment of pesticide risks, but instead simply reflects the overall load of pesticides found on commonly eaten fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainty of the risks of pesticide exposure and the value judgments involved in the choice to buy food with less pesticides.

Pesticides cause many adverse effects in well designed animal studies, from cancer to nervous system damage to reproductive effects. Rather than assign more weight to cancer than birth defects, we simply assumed that all adverse effects are equal. There is a significant degree of uncertainty about the health effects of pesticide mixtures. This ranking takes this uncertainty into account in the most defensible way possible, by simply ranking fruits and vegetables by their likelihood of being consistently contaminated with the greatest number of pesticides at the highest levels.

The produce listed in the Guide was chosen after an analysis of USDA food consumption data from 1994-1996. The 47 selected were those reported eaten on at least one tenth of one percent of all "eating days" in the survey and with a minimum of 100 pesticide test results from the years 2000 to 2007. An eating day is one day of food consumption reported to USDA by one individual, some of whom were followed for three days.

Conventionally grown food is also typically tainted with a multitude of chemical residues, including chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides.

These chemical concoctions can cause a wide variety of health problems, including:

1. Neurotoxicity
2. Disruption of your endocrine system
3. Cancer
4. Immune system suppression
5. Male infertility and miscarriages in women

The Full List: 47 Fruits and Veggies

Here is a ranking of 47 different fruits and vegetables, but grapes are listed twice because both domestic and imported samples were reviewed.

RANK	FRUIT OR VEGGIE	SCORE
1 (worst)	Peach	100 (highest pesticide load)
2	Apple	93
3	Sweet Bell Pepper	83
4	Celery	82
5	Nectarine	81
6	Strawberries	80
7	Cherries	73
8	Kale	69
9	Lettuce	67
10	Grapes - Imported	66
11	Carrot	63
12	Pear	63
13	Collard Greens	60
14	Spinach	58
15	Potato	56
16	Green Beans	53
17	Summer Squash	53
18	Pepper	51
19	Cucumber	50
20	Raspberries	46
21	Grapes - Domestic	44
22	Plum	44
23	Orange	44
24	Cauliflower	39
25	Tangerine	37
26	Mushrooms	36
27	Banana	34
28	Winter Squash	34
29	Cantaloupe	33
30	Cranberries	33
31	Honeydew Melon	30
32	Grapefruit	29
33	Sweet Potato	29
34	Tomato	29
35	Broccoli	28
36	Watermelon	26
37	Papaya	20
38	Eggplant	20
39	Cabbage	17
40	Kiwi	13
41	Sweet Peas - Frozen	10
42	Asparagus	10
43	Mango	9
44	Pineapple	7
45	Sweet Corn - Frozen	2
46	Avocado	1
47 (best)	Onion	1 (lowest pesticide load)