Provided by: www.ewg.org
The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce ranks pesticide contamination for 46 popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of over 100,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 1992 - 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.
The six measures of contamination we used were:
- Percent of the samples tested with detectable pesticides
- Percent of the samples with two or more pesticides
- Average number of pesticides found on a sample
- Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found
- Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample
- Number of pesticides found on the commodity in total
The philosophy behind the guide is simple: give consumers the information they need make choices to reduce pesticides in their diets. In this spirit, the Guide does not present a complex assessment of pesticide risks, but instead simply reflects the overall load of pesticides found on commonly eaten fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainty of the risks of pesticide exposure and the value judgments involved in the choice to buy food with less pesticides.
Pesticides cause many adverse effects in well designed animal studies, from cancer, to nervous system damage, to reproductive effects. Rather than assign more weight to cancer than birth defects, we simply assumed that all adverse effects are equal. There is a significant degree of uncertainty about the health effects of pesticide mixtures. This ranking takes this uncertainty into account in the most defensible way possible, by simply ranking fruits and vegetables by their likelihood of being consistently contaminated with the greatest number of pesticides at the highest levels.
The produce listed in the Guide was chosen after an analysis of USDA food consumption data from 1994-1996. The 46 selected were those reported eaten on at least one tenth of one percent of all "eating days" in the survey with a minimum of 100 pesticide test results. An eating day is one day of food consumption reported to USDA by one individual - some of whom were followed for three days.
More From the EWG Food News:
Pesticides in Produce
Most Contaminated
Least Contaminated
Should I Stop Eating Certain Foods?
What about washing?
How We Measured Contamination
Why Reducing Pesticide Exposure is Smart
Doesn't the Government Regulate These Chemicals?
Are These Chemicals Bad For Me?
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