The 2023 Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen Pesticide Food Guide – Part I

The Environmental Working Group (also known as EWG) analyzes Department of Agriculture test data to identify each year which fruits and vegetables are the most and least contaminated with pesticides. The Dirty Dozen lists the most contaminated, and the Clean Fifteen lists the lowest residue items.

This is serious stuff, because pesticides are toxins. They are designed to kill living things, like insects, plants and fungi; however, many of these toxins are dangerous for people, as well. They have been confirmed over and over to produce health dangers, such as cancer, hormone disruption, and brain and nervous system toxicity by many US and international agencies, scientists and physicians. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents shop via the EWG Shopper’s Guide.

To come up with this year’s list, the EWG sifted through USDA data on 46,569 samples of 46 of the most popular fruits and vegetables. The USDA even washed and peeled them before their analysis. Still, 75% of the fresh produce contained pesticide residue after washing.

Each type of produce analyzed is ranked from “clean” to “dirty” with a score assigned based on the percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides. The USDA does the testing, but EWG provides the analysis of those tests. This involves six ways in which they measure pesticide contamination in order to rank a produce as either clean or dirty. One approach involves giving a percentage of samples with detectable pesticides, a second approach involves giving a percentage of samples with two or more pesticides, and a third approach provides an average number of pesticides found on a single sample.

Fourthly, they average the amount of pesticides found, measured in parts per million; fifth, they provide the maximum number of pesticides on a single sample; and lastly, they give the total number of pesticides found on a crop.

This is the 2023 Dirty list: #1 is strawberries (which has been #1 for many years), #2 spinach, #3 Kale, collards and mustard greens, #4 peaches, #5 pears, #6 nectarines, #7 apples, #8 grapes, #9 Bell and hot peppers, #10 cherries, #11 blueberries and #12 green beans.

Here are some of the highlights from their analysis. They found that more than 90% of the strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes were positive for two or more pesticides, and that a total of 210 different pesticides were found overall on the Dirty Dozen items.

All of the produce on the Dirty Dozen list had at least one sample with a minimum of 13 different pesticides, with some having as high as 23. Kale, collard and mustard greens, as well as hot and bell peppers had the most pesticides of any crop – 103 and 101 pesticides in total. And most interesting is that the neurotoxic organophosphate insecticide, acephate, which was prohibited from use on green beans in 2011, was detected on 6% of the samples.

In part II we will look at the Clean Fifteen produce, or the produce with the lowest amount of pesticide residue. We will also continue to address the toxicity levels of what is sprayed on our food, for health reasons, not nutritional values.