Ellie’s First Essay

March 18, 2021

Every year the Environmental Working Group updates its Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists in order to help shoppers identify which fruits and vegetables are best to buy organic, and which ones are fine to buy non-organic. This year’s list puts non-organic strawberries, spinach, and leafy greens—including kale, collard, and mustard greens—in the top three spots for most contaminated produce, while avocados, sweet corn, and pineapple take the price for the cleanest.

Over 90% of samples of conventional strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines, and leafy greens tested positive for residues of two or more pesticides, and a single sample of kale, collard, and mustard greens had up to 20 different pesticides. Spinach was particularly bad, with 1.8 times as much pesticide residue as any other crop tested.

  The Clean Fifteen list was clean indeed, with almost 70% of samples showing no pesticide residues whatsoever. A mere 8% of fruits and vegetables on the Clean Fifteen list had traces of two or more pesticides, whereas those on the Dirty Dozen often revealed multiple contaminants; hot peppers and bell peppers had the most pesticides detected.