Editor's note: This is the last in a series of six articles we have been sharing from the Genetic Literacy Project about pesticides and food.
By Kayleen Schreiber and Marc Brazeau
In this series, we have highlighted the complexities surrounding pesticide use, and the importance of balance instead of extremes and generalizations. A final worry that many consumers have is that pesticide residues on their produce are dangerous to their health. Scare tactics from advocacy groups and misleading information from the media commonly give the impression that organic produce is safer and healthier than conventional produce.
6: Pesticide residues―Something to worry about?
Organic produce still contains pesticides and pesticide residues. Many advocacy groups use the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen to call out specific produce that should be avoided because they contain more pesticide residue than other produce. However, the Dirty Dozen list does not take into account the level of pesticide detected and how that compares to the EPA’s tolerance levels. The Dirty Dozen list implies that produce with the most pesticide residue detections are dangerous and unhealthy instead of giving context to allow consumers to understand what the pesticide residue detections really mean. In this case, context means that even produce with the highest levels of pesticide residue are well below a level that would be dangerous to humans. In addition, the Dirty Dozen list does not compare conventional and organic produce, which typically contain very similar levels of pesticide residue.
The following graph shows the total number of tests done by the USDA for pesticide residues on specific vegetables in 2017, the number of detections found, and the number of detections over the EPA tolerance for the specific pesticide detected. The data is from the USDA pesticide data program. Clearly, both conventional and organic produce is very safe and very low levels of pesticides are detected in general.
Conventional and organic produce has such low amounts of pesticides on it that you could eat your weight in fruit every day and still not be in danger of any health problems from the pesticides (You definitely would have health problems from eating that much fruit though!).
Read the rest of this post on the Genetic Literacy Project's website.
This article excerpt is part 6 of a 6 part series – Pesticides and Food: It’s Not a Black or White Issue – that ran originally on the Genetic Literary Project and is reposted here with permission of the GLP and the authors.