The Co-op Food Stores of New Hampshire and Vermont

added 05/18/10

Does the strawberry above really belong on a dirty list? Do any fruits and veggies belong on a list of dirty foods? Like many organizations, the Co-op has been asked by the good folks at the Environmental Working Group to post the so-called “Dirty Dozen” list. We asked Co-op dietitian Mary Choate to look into it for the benefit of our members and shoppers. Here is what she had to report.

The Dirty Dozen: Not as Clean and Simple as it Looks

by Mary Saucier Choate, M.S., R.D., L.D.

The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, with its “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” (http://bit.ly/b90M8g), seems like a quick and easy way to know which fruits and vegetables to buy organic and which are ok to buy conventionally grown. But then, on their frequently asked questions (FAQ page), http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php, they go out of their way to state that it is beneficial to eat either kind:

… eat your fruits and vegetables! The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.

Breaking Down the Data

To delve into this seeming contradiction more deeply, I looked at the same data that EWG used: information from the USDA Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary, Calendar Year 2008 http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5081750
The original data provides some surprising information:

• No residues at all were detected on 30 percent of these food samples: fresh and processed fruit and vegetables, almonds, honey, corn grain, and rice. More than 99 percent of the samples analyzed did not contain residues that were above safety limits; most were well below these safe levels. This means that whether you follow the list or not, you are extremely unlikely to be exposed to dangerous levels of pesticide residues. The very low legal safety levels are a result of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996. Pesticide levels now are set to be safe even for infants and young children and are required by law to focus on products frequently consumed by them. http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/laws/fqpa/index.htm

• Of 11,950 samples tested, pesticide residues exceeding safe levels were found on sixty. This equals one-half of one percent of all the produce tested. “The samples containing residues that exceed established tolerances include: 3 cultivated blueberry samples, 2 celery samples, 1 corn grain sample, 2 green bean samples, 11 samples of collard greens, 10 kale samples, 7 potato samples, 16 spinach samples, 2 samples of strawberries, 5 samples of summer squash, and 1 tomato sample.”

• Pesticide residues with no established tolerance were found on fewer than 4% of samples tested. According to the PDP report, in most cases, these residues were detected at very low levels and some residues may have resulted from spray drift or crop rotations.

Even organic produce cannot always escape pesticide drift. Organic produce may legally contain up to five percent of detectable EPA pesticide safety limits. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3003539&acct=noprulemaking
This puts the EWG report in a very different perspective. More than 99 percent of the samples had either no residues or had pesticide levels that were within safe limits, even for children.

So should we abandon organic produce and just eat conventional? Not if you care about pesticide runoff, water quality, and farm workers and their children’s health, as well as soil and crop biodiversity, humane animal treatment and the many other benefits of organic farming methods.

What’s a Consumer to Think?

EWG might consider refocusing its resources on bringing much more taxpayer awareness to the subsidies large corporate factory farms receive to bring us “cheap” food that we pay for through environmental damage. http://farm.ewg.org/ When the agribusiness playing field is this off-balance, it is hard for small and organic farmers to compete successfully.

NOTE: This report corrects a previous version of this article, which stated that the percentage of pesticide residues detected was less than two percent, which I interpreted to mean that more than 98% of the samples tested did not have any residues detected. I was mistaken. After reading another report on the same data, which conflicted with my interpretation, I contacted the PDP directly to understand how to interpret their data correctly.

Here is the confusing statement from the PDP: “Overall, the percentage of residues detected (the number of residues detected divided by the total number of analyses performed for each commodity) was 1.6 percent.” What this actually means is that for all of the pesticides tested for in the testing system versus all of the commodity foods tested, the PDP only found the incidence of pesticides in 1.6% of any pesticide-commodity combination (a pesticide in a given commodity). Explained by Dr. Robert L. Epstein, Deputy Administrator, Science & Technology Programs, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.