The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) 2025 Dirty Dozen list considers pesticide toxicity for the first time. While critics say the list is alarmist and may discourage the consumption of safe fruit and vegetables, EWG argues that “legal does not mean safe” when it comes to pesticide residues.
The Alliance for Food and Farming has created an online tool that enables users to view the amount of produce a person would have to consume to experience health effects from pesticide residues.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently released its Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary for 2023, which showed more than 99 percent of sampled products to be compliant with pesticide residue tolerances set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Based on an analysis of seven years of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA's) Pesticide Data Program, watchdog group Consumer Reports is warning that it found pesticide residues to pose “significant risks” in 20 percent of foods analyzed.
USDA’s Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary for 2022 shows that more than 99 percent of products sampled through PDP had residues below tolerances set by EPA. However, testing for persistent environmental contaminants that are no longer used as pesticides in the U.S. showed the presence of certain banned chemicals in some foods.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA’s AMS) has found the majority of fruits and vegetables in the U.S. to contain pesticide residues below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to the agency’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) summary for 2021.
