The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released its annual Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ for 2022. In the guide, EWG compiles data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine what fruits and vegetables contain the most and least pesticide-contaminated produce in the U.S. EWG’s guide also includes its Dirty Dozen™ and Clean Fifteen™ lists, which provide a quick overview of the guide’s findings for consumers to reference. EWG reports that more than 70 percent of non-organic fresh produce sold in the U.S. contains residues of potentially harmful pesticides.
The data analyzed for the 2022 guide comes from USDA and FDA tests of 46 different types of produce in the years 2011–2020 (excluding pineapple data, which is from 2002). USDA does not sample every type of produce annually; each year USDA selects a subset of produce types to test. The most recent data includes test results of 44,702 samples of produce. USDA also does not test for all pesticides used in crop production. A notable pesticide that is not included in USDA tests is glyphosate, which is the most commonly used pesticide in the U.S.