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WG analyzed pesticide residue testing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration to come up with rankings for these popular fresh produce items. All 48 foods are listed below from worst to best (lower numbers = more pesticides).

Note: EWG analyzed pesticide tests of 48 popular produce items. Domestic and imported versions of two items - blueberries and snap peas - showed sharply different results, so we have ranked those domestic and imported items separately. As a result, the full list of foods ranked by the Shopper's Guide displays 50 entries.

Click on link to see list.


www.ewg.org/foodnews/list.php

Nice find. I remember that list from years back, though it seems a few items have shifted a bit in the rankings. I also remember from last year an article that took a careful look at not just the levels but also the types of pesticides in an attempt to sort out which foods would be more/less likely to have high levels of potentially riskier pesticides. Then too, there was an articles from around 2007 about the complex interactions of various pesticides, finding that there are synergistic effects in some cases.

I buy a lot of organic produce at places like Trader Joe's, with particular attention to what some people call the "dirty dozen" and with attention to the vegetables I eat a lot of, like broccoli, spinach, and tomatoes. Unfortunately, prices is a factor for me, so I buy non-organic bananas and avocados. It's the best I can do at present.

It was posted on the PDSA FB page this morning.

Another tidbit that makes the question of pesticides more complicated:
www.wired.com/2016/05/monsantos-roundup-herbicide-cause-cancer-not-controversy-explained/

The article does a good job explaining the difference between "hazard" and "risk," a key distinction in research on the effects of pesticide exposure via food.

Aoi - That taught me something! Hazard is an absolute term while risk is relative to the person and situation. Aspirin is a hazard, in that there is the potential for it to cause excessive bleeding, but at a "safe" dosage the risk is minimal... unless you have ITP!

I guess the opposite of risky would be safe, and the opposite of hazardous would be harmless.

This is the problem we face with assessing risk of pesticides, medications, etc., that they may be safe for 999 out of one thousand people, but if you have that one in a thousand genetic vulnerability, the risk for you may be 100%.

Risk/benefit assessment is difficult to do if we don't know probabilities. Is Rituxan safer than dapsone? Both present hazards, both have black box warnings, both can kill you. Which one is riskier? First, the data isn't available. Second, the risk also depends on circumstances: quality of medical followup, individual health, etc.

For vaccines the numbers SHOULD be easy to find to do risk/benefit analysis. How many deaths with or without a certain vaccine, or how many lives compromised by the vaccine vs. those compromised by the disease?