EWG’s Shopper’s Guide is based on laboratory tests conducted by the Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program. Each year through this program the USDA tests thousands of fresh fruits and vegetables for residue from hundreds of pesticides.

EWG analyzes the results from the most recent testing data of each type of produce to rank popular fresh fruits and vegetables based on levels of pesticide contamination and pesticide toxicity. 

Read more about our methodology here and more details about our methodology here.

Pesticides are toxic by design. They are created expressly to kill living organisms – insects, plants and fungi that are considered agricultural pests. Health risks of pesticide exposures have been confirmed by independent scientists and physicians around the world, in addition to U.S. and international government agencies. The potential health problems connected to pesticide exposure include brain and nervous system toxicity, cancer, reproductive and developmental harm and hormone disruption.

Read more about why EWG releases its Shopper’s Guide every year.

While pesticide concentrations detected on fruits and vegetables comply with Environmental Protection Agency limits, these legal limits aren’t necessarily safe.

The EPA’s pesticide limits on food, called “tolerances,” help the agency determine whether farmers are applying pesticides properly. If tolerances were set to protect all children eating produce, as EWG believes they should be, more fruits and vegetables would fail to meet them.

The 1996 Food Quality Protection Act required the EPA to reevaluate its safety standards by 2006 to ensure they protected consumers from excessive pesticide use.

The law stresses the protection of infants, children and other vulnerable people. It requires the EPA to review the safety of each use of every agricultural pesticide at least once every 15 years. 

Over the past two decades, the EPA has restricted many uses of toxic insecticides such as organophosphates. 

But the EPA has only selectively applied the voluntary tenfold safety factor advocated by children’s health experts. 

In 2006, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that the EPA had used a child-protective factor on 11 out of 59 pesticide assessments, and in half those cases, used only a threefold safety factor instead of a tenfold safety factor.

A peer-reviewed study conducted by EWG scientists in 2020 found that the EPA fails to adequately consider children in setting exposure limits for 90% of the most common pesticides – despite its legal requirement, under the Food Quality Protection Act, to do so.

And when setting allowable limits, the EPA considers only one pesticide at a time, despite documentation of human exposure to dozens of pesticides in biomonitoring studies and food tests. Studies of the potential health harms from chemical mixtures routinely show that mixtures are more toxic than individual chemicals.

And many pesticides remain in use in the U.S. that, because of their risks to human health, have been banned in the European Union. 

Everyone should eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. The health benefits of such a diet outweigh the risks from pesticide exposure.

EWG’s Shopper’s Guide is designed to support people who would like to minimize their exposure to pesticides. It includes two lists: the Clean Fifteen™, the non-organic, or conventional, fruit and vegetables with very low or no traces of pesticides, as well as the Dirty Dozen, the fruit and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues.

EWG recommends consumers who want to reduce their pesticide exposure buy organic versions of Dirty Dozen items, when accessible, and either conventional or organic versions of the Clean Fifteen.

Many studies have connected diets high in organic food with lower exposure to synthetic pesticides. Although synthetic pesticides can sometimes be detected on organic produce, likely from cross-contamination during growing or storage, the levels are far lower than on conventional samples. 

EWG recommends that everyone eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, whether organic or conventional.

For families and individuals concerned about their exposure to pesticides, EWG recommends buying organic whenever accessible, because food residues are a main source of pesticide exposures for many people. And several studies have shown that pesticide levels in the body drop after a switch to an all-organic diet – and rise again once a person returns to consumption of conventionally grown food.

Check out the full list of 47 fruits and vegetables to see where other fruits and vegetables rank in terms of pesticide levels. For produce closer to the Dirty Dozen, especially popular fruit and vegetables, shoppers may want to consider organic options, if accessible.

Since organically raised produce is not universally accessible, EWG’s Shopper’s Guide is designed to provide consumers with a tool to help them decide whether to buy organic or conventional when they shop for produce. 

“Organic” is a designation used by the USDA National Organic Program to certify food that was produced without synthetic chemicals or fertilizers, with few exceptions, as well as genetic engineering, radiation or sewage sludge.

Yes. Organic farmers may use pesticides, but only those that align with organic standards, mostly non-synthetic substances derived from natural sources. Typically, natural substances are allowed unless specifically prohibited or restricted. Synthetic substances are banned unless explicitly approved. 

The USDA regulates these compounds through the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances, which outlines what is and is not acceptable in organic production. 

The use of pesticides is only one part of pest management in organic farming. Organic growers often use biological controls, meaning other organisms, to counteract pests. And pesticides are often used only after other methods have been used and considered.

A study in Kern County, Calif., one of the state’s largest crop-producing counties, found that, on average, organic fields were less likely than conventional fields to use pesticides and applied less pesticides than conventional fields. 

According to the National Pesticide Information Center, “most of the natural pesticides used in organic production are exempt from the requirement for a tolerance because they are so low in toxicity.” When organic lettuce samples were investigated for three organic pesticides, spinosad and azadirachtin A and B, only about 18%, 2% and 0.3% had detections, respectively. 

Organic produce can legally have some synthetic pesticides on them, due to cross-contamination from conventional production, but these levels are significantly lower than conventional produce.

No, EWG is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization largely funded by individual donations and grants from charitable foundations.

In 2013 EWG partnered with the Organic Voices Action Fund, or OVAF, to highlight the benefits of organic food and advance the fight for labeling food that contains genetically engineered ingredients.

Between 2013 and 2018, OVAF made six grants to EWG to support our joint GMO labeling advocacy campaign, Just Label It! That agreement and partnership formally expired in 2018.

These grants ranged from 0.3% to 5% of EWG’s total annual revenue in those years.

EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce is based on samples of produce available to U.S. consumers, and it includes both domestic and imported produce in the same proportions as the USDA samples. We typically combine test results for domestic and imported fruits and vegetables. 

Yes. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national biomonitoring program, designed to be representative of the U.S. population, tests blood and urine for some pesticides in two-year cycles. These pesticides typically include insecticides like organophosphates, pyrethroids and neonicotinoids, and herbicides like glyphosate and 2,4-D. 

Between 2005 and 2016, 100% of tested Americans ages 6 and older had detectable levels of organochlorine pesticides, which are no longer allowed for use. Glyphosate has been detected in 70% to 80% of the population, and at least half the population was exposed to neonicotinoids. 

It’s important to study the presence of pesticides and other chemicals in urine, because it’s a critical tool for assessing human exposure to these chemicals. 

Studies often use the levels in urine to measure exposures and their association with particular health outcomes. Many studies have linked pesticide levels in urine to human health harms.

The CDC’s program measures a subset of pesticides only, but we know most people are likely exposed to hundreds of them through their food. And biomonitoring studies from other populations have detected many more and different pesticides than are routinely monitored in the U.S. 

This doesn’t mean people in other countries face more exposure than those in the U.S. do. But it does highlight the fact that routine monitoring studies don’t capture all exposures. 

And agribusiness and pesticide companies are not required to assess the presence of these chemicals in people, even in cases of pesticides widespread in the food supply. 

Food residues are the dominant source of pesticide exposures for most people. Several studies have shown that pesticide levels in the body go down when people switch to an all-organic diet and rise again once they return to eating conventionally grown foods.

The EPA currently considers neonicotinoids a relatively low risk to human health. But recent reviews of animal studies have highlighted concern about these chemicals’ harm to the developing nervous and reproductive systems. 

And the European Food Safety Authority recently proposed reducing the safe levels of exposure to acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid commonly found on fruits and detected in biomonitoring studies of children.

In 2017, researchers from George Washington University and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reported that in some human epidemiological studies, exposure to neonics has been linked to increased risk of harm of the developing fetus.

Since 2020, other animal studies show neonics may also harm the male and female reproductive systems, as well as lowering memory capacityand heightening abnormal behavior in mice.

You can read more about neonics here.

Most genetically engineered or bioengineered crops, also known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, that consumers encounter in a supermarket are not fresh fruits and vegetables but rather corn and soybeans used as ingredients in highly processed foods. And EWG’s Shopper’s Guide is solely based on the presence and levels of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables. 

For example, corn syrup and corn oil, produced from predominantly GMO starchy field corn, are commonly found in such foods. And both the field corn – which is grown to be processed and/or used an ingredient in other food, not to be eaten on the cob – and soy grown in this country are genetically modified to withstand direct applications of glyphosate and sometimes 2,4-D, a toxic herbicide with significant health risks. 

According to the USDA and Food and Drug Administration, you may also find genetically modified zucchini, yellow squash, sweet corn, papaya, pink pineapple, potatoes and apples in U.S. markets – although only papayas and pink pineapple are predominantly GMO.

By law, some GMO food products in the U.S. must be labeled as such. But these labels may be difficult to interpret, since they may use terms like “bioengineered” to describe their GMO content.

Consumers who want to avoid GMOs can choose organic zucchini, yellow squash, sweet corn, papaya, apples and potatoes. 

Processed goods that are certified organic or bear Non-GMO Project Verified labels can also be trusted to be GMO-free.

EWG provides several resources – including EWG’s Shopper’s Guide To Avoiding GMO Food, EWG’s Food Scores database and EWG’s Healthy Living app – to help consumers identify food likely to contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Consumption of organically produced food reduces pesticide exposure and is linked to a variety of health benefits, according to multiple studies and, especially, a French study of over 30,000 people.

Clinical trials continue to show that people who switch from non-organic to organic foods see a rapid and dramatic reduction in their urinary pesticide concentrations, a marker of pesticide exposure.

Other studies have linked higher consumption of organic foods to lower urinary pesticide levels, improved health outcomes, including reductions in maternal obesity and pregnancy-associated preeclampsia risks, lower BMI and reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes. 

Choosing organic fruits and vegetables can almost immediately reduce the amounts of residues in a person’s body, because the harmful chemicals used on non-organic, or conventional, produce are no longer a factor.

Researchers from Harvard University used USDA test data and methods similar to EWG’s to classify produce as having high or low pesticides. That study’s lists of high- and low-pesticide crops largely overlap with EWG’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen.

On the basis of a methodology similar to the one EWG uses to classify pesticide burdens, Harvard researchers have also observed that people who ate greater quantities of crops high in pesticides had higher levels of urinary pesticides, lower fertility and reduced ovarian function, and that consuming fruits and vegetables with high levels of pesticide residues may lessen the benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, including protection against cardiovascular disease and mortality.