The Dirty Dozen undermines trust in safe and nutritious fruits and vegetables
EWG’s annual list twists data, spreads fear, and puts profit over public health.
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It’s springtime in the US, which means the Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases their annual Dirty Dozen list, the bane of everyone who understands agriculture and food science.
If you have been influenced by the Dirty Dozen list, I’m here to tell you that it is not your fault. EWG has been putting this list out since 2004, which means they’ve been manipulating the public with fear-based claims for over twenty years. That’s a lot of repetition and scare tactics to erase. But I’m here to help start that process, because while they claim this list—and all the other content they produce—is intended to help the public (and the environment), it all does the exact opposite.
If you’re unfamiliar, the “Dirty Dozen” list is the EWG’s annual list they claim are the twelve conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables that are most contaminated with pesticides. They say they create this list to educate people so they can avoid those conventional produce items and instead, purchase the organic versions.
The problem? It’s all bullshit.
The “Dirty Dozen” list is a heaping pile of disinformation that benefits EWG and its large organic corporate donors.
None of the produce items included on the list have pesticide residue levels that exceed the safety thresholds established and monitored by regulatory agencies based on extensive studies from legitimate scientists.
The EWG profits by spreading fear around safe, affordable, and nutritious conventionally grown foods. They brought in $18.1 million dollars in 2023, which they use for political lobbying and anti-science information campaigns.
The EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” ranking method lacks any scientific credibility
How does the EWG create this list of 12 produce items they claim you need to avoid because you’ll be harmed if you eat them? EWG doesn’t actually do food testing. They take the United States Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program annual report and then the fudge the numbers.
The Pesticide Data Program (PDP) is annual a monitoring program that assesses trace residuals of synthetic pesticides used in conventional farming on finished food products. PDP was created in 1991 because of public outcry about synthetic versus natural pesticides based on chemophobia and misinformation, and it is regulated by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
What the EWG does to classify ‘contaminated produce’ items is they take the USDA report and rank conventional produce based on the number of different pesticide residues were detected - regardless of how small those amounts are.
This is unscientific nonsense created to scare people.
By EWG logic methodology, if 10 different pesticides are detected on a food, each of them completely different classes of chemicals, each at 1,000 times lower than the safety tolerance limit set by EPA, that food would be listed as “dirty” — and on the flip side, if a different produce item has only one pesticide residue detected at a slightly higher level, but still 100 times lower than the safety limit, it would be ranked “clean.”
Both of those produce items are absolutely safe to consume and are well below the pesticide thresholds set by EPA, but it illustrates how wildly inappropriate the EWG methods are.
EWG does not factor in actual scientifically-based considerations for potential exposure risks, like:
The dose of each residue.
Whether the substance is even harmful at detected levels, or to humans generally.
Whether exposure from eating fruits and vegetables would matter at all.
You can’t just say total ‘pesticide residue count’ and consider that a cumulative exposure—every single chemical has different properties, interacts with our bodies in different ways, is excreted and processed differently, have different mechanisms of actions. Fungicides are not insecticides are not herbicides—and even within those classes of pesticides, they are ALL different. This logic lacks any chemistry understanding.
Then EWG claims the foods on their “Dirty Dozen” list are unsafe, when the levels of residues are orders of magnitudes lower than could ever potentially be harmful. You’d need to eat hundreds of servings of each food to even hit the safety threshold, which is already 100-1000 times lower than a level that could theoretically cause harm.
None of the conventionally grown items on the EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” list exceed pesticide thresholds that are set, tested for, and rigorously monitored.
Let’s use an example.
EWG’s 2025 list ranks spinach as the most contaminated conventionally-grown produce item. They’re lying to you.
A woman could safely eat 145 POUNDS (66 KG) of conventional spinach every day, even if every serving contained the highest level of pesticide residue ever recorded. That’s 774 servings of spinach.
A man could safely eat 203 pounds (92 kg)
A teen could safely eat 116 pounds (52.7 kg)
A child could safely eat 58 pounds (26.3 kg)
Can you eat 145 pounds of spinach every day? I sure can’t.
The Dirty Dozen list is a profitable disinformation campaign designed to scare people from safe, nutritious, and more affordable conventionally-grown produce.
One of the biggest misconceptions about organic products are that they are pesticide-free. This is false.
Conveniently missing from the Dirty Dozen list are all the produce items grown using organic farming methods. EWG omits this to push people to buy organic counterparts, claiming they are free from pesticide residues, safer, more environmentally-friendly. But that’s also a lie.
Organic farming uses pesticides. The PDP report only includes synthetic chemicals used in conventional farming, which are regulated by the EPA for application rates, procedures (for example, conventional insecticides can’t be applied at certain times of the year or day to minimize potential off-target impacts) and all of these must require extensive data on toxicity, environmental impact, and efficacy before approval.
Organic pesticides aren’t in the USDA pesticide residue report because, unlike synthetic ones, they aren’t regulated for safety or application rates.
Pesticides used in organic farming aren’t excluded because they are inherently safer—it’s because of the appeal to nature fallacy and ideology that led to the creation of the National Organic Program in 1990, which is not a scientific certification at all, but merely a way to legitimize false claims of organic farming organizations and lobbying groups who wanted to profit off the perception that organic is greener and healthier. It isn’t. In fact, organic farming methods are more ecologically damaging in most ways than conventional farming (more on that here, here, here, and here).
Organic farming uses a lot of pesticides.
Natural pesticides refer to products that are derived strictly from sources in nature with little to no chemical alteration. Synthetic pesticides are products that are produced from chemical alteration. All pesticides are toxic (-cide means to kill) - and the dose makes the poison.
Because organic pesticides are not permitted to be altered to improve specificity or biodegradability, many organic pesticides are less effective, can bioaccumulate more, and have worse ecological impact by killing non-target species, many of which can be natural predators of the target pest in question. For example, organic pesticides used for aphids can kill multicolored Asian lady beetles and insidious flower bugs, both of which are natural predators of aphids. Many require much higher concentrations to be applied to have similar impacts as conventional pesticides.
Many of these pesticides are more toxic than synthetic counterparts used in conventional farming. For example, to prevent fungal infections when growing spinach, organic farmers use copper hydroxide, a natural chemical, whereas conventional farmers use captan, a synthetic chemical. Copper hydroxide is 9 times more toxic than captan. That’s because the source of a chemical has no bearing on its potential harm — or safety.
There is no requirement for toxicology and safety testing and regulation of pesticides used in organic farming.
Because the USDA surveillance is monitoring only synthetic pesticides, none of those are included in the PDP report either. But more than that, several studies have demonstrated that organic products *also* have synthetic pesticide residues, on top of the organic pesticides that are not monitored for safety or efficacy. The EWG fails to mention this in their report.
The EWG does not disclose that organic produce can contain organic pesticide residues as well as synthetic pesticide residues.
EWG profits the more they scare people away from conventionally-grown produce items.
You might be thinking, why on earth would they do that? Well, because they profit when they get donations. They get donations from large organic corporations, who also profit when people purchase their products:
EWG has an obvious profit motive.
EWG reported $18.1 million dollars in revenue in 2023, the most in their history. It’s not surprise this coincides with the acceleration of wellness disinformation and influencer rhetoric from people like Vani Hari and Mark Hyman.
Conventional produce is safe and nutritious and more affordable.
Conventional produce is safe to eat. More than that, it is just as nutritious.
Conventional produce has the same nutritional content and is as safe to consume as 'organic' produce. A recent systematic review found no strong evidence that eating organic produce offers more health benefits than eating conventional fruits and vegetables. There are no credible data to suggest avoiding conventional produce items on the "Dirty Dozen" list offers any health benefit.
Pesticide residues on conventional food items are consistently far below safety limits set by regulatory agencies, even for vulnerable populations. Organic produce isn’t inherently safer or better for the environment - it’s grown using pesticides with fewer application regulations and less frequent residue monitoring than conventional ones. What determines potential harm - for anything - is EXPOSURE. Scientific evidence shows that trace pesticide levels detected on conventional produce pose no health risk. More on this, below:
Eating more fruits and vegetables is what matters.
The health benefits are well-established, whereas concerns about pesticide residues are unfounded.
EWG’s rhetoric exacerbates the fact that most Americans already don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. The EWG ‘Dirty Dozen’ list negatively impacts people’s shopping decisions with baseless information that preys on our fears, when it is not based on any valid scientific information.
The false dichotomy between conventional and organic isn't just misleading, it's dangerous. Our constant attention to natural versus synthetic causes fear and distrust, when in actuality, our food has never been safer. Eating less fruits and vegetables due to fear of pesticides or the high price of organics does far more harm to our health than any pesticide residues on our food.
Can’t we just not use pesticides?
Sorry, no. This isn’t your backyard garden, this is farming to feed 8+ billion people. Pesticides and herbicides prevent destruction of food crops by unwanted insects, bacteria, fungi, and weeds.
If we did not utilize pesticides for agriculture, yields of farm crops would be impacted, cost of food goods would skyrocket, and we would not be able to feed the 8.1 billion people on the planet.
Herbicides reduce the need for tilling, improving soil health and reducing erosion.
Pest control saves $40 billion in crop losses every year and reduces food costs.
Without pest control, farmers could lose between 20-50% of their crops annually - this would make food more expensive.
A stable food supply ensures 8+ billion people on the planet have access to food.
On the flip side, organic farming uses 84% more land for the same yield, and yields are 55% lower by area than conventional.
Every chemical can be harmful at a certain dose - even water. Pesticides approved for conventional farming are strictly regulated for safety and environmental impact. Regulations keep pesticide residues on foods well below safety limits that protect health. These residues on conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables pose no health risk.
Toxicology experts have investigated the pesticide levels in the Dirty Dozen and have concluded:
“The methodology used by the EWG to rank the fruits and vegetables with respect to pesticide risks lacks scientific credibility.”
“Exposure to the most commonly detected pesticides on the 'dirty dozen' fruits and vegetables poses negligible risks to consumers.”
EWG's misinformation fuels fear about safe, healthy foods - undermining public trust and endangering people’s well-being.
Save your money and your sanity, and avoid being scared by the EWG and their false list of ‘dirty’ produce. And while you’re at it, don’t trust anything the EWG says - it is all based on unsubstantiated claims intended to scare you, all exploiting the risk perception gap.
While the EWG claims to help human health through research and by advocating for industry changes, in reality, they do the opposite. Do not trust them as a credible source of any scientific or health information.
Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
More science education, less disinformation.
- Andrea
ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:
Additional references:
EWG Private Sector Engagement. www.ewg.org/ewg-private-sector-engagement
Dietary Exposure to Pesticide Residues from Commodities Alleged to Contain the Highest Contamination Levels. doi:10.1155/2011/589674
“The Dose Makes the Poison.” www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/health-and-safety/the-dose-makes-the-poison/
Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary Reports. www.ams.usda.gov/reports/pdp-annual-summary-reports
Fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer and all-cause mortality—a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. doi:10.1093/ije/dyw319
The Associations of Fruit and Vegetable Intakes with Burden of Diseases: A Systematic Review of Meta-Analyses. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2018.11.007
Relation of Different Fruit and Vegetable Sources With Incident Cardiovascular Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies. doi:10.1161/JAHA.120.017728
Fruits, vegetables, and health: A comprehensive narrative, umbrella review of the science and recommendations for enhanced public policy to improve intake. doi:10.1080/10408398.2019.1632258
Potential Health Benefits of a Diet Rich in Organic Fruit and Vegetables versus a Diet Based on Conventional Produce: A Systematic Review. doi:10.1093/nutrit/nuae104
National Organic Program. www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program
2023 Annual Report. 30th Anniversary Edition (p.3) https://www.ewg.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/EWG_AnnualReport-2023_C01.pdf
https://news.immunologic.org/p/organic-foods-are-not-healthieror
https://news.immunologic.org/p/conventional-produce-is-safe-to-eat
I'm not sure which is worse, EWG or Non-GMO Project. Maybe they're two peas in the same fear-mongering pod.
Thank you so much. This is so helpful. I am so sick of the claims that basically all food is poison. I keep thinking about the episode Dr. Mike did with Dr. Makary last year maybe? and he was fear mongering about strawberries being laced with pesticides. I don’t understand what these people want us to eat! Ugh.