Eat Fruits and Veggies, Ignore Yearly Dirty Dozen False Food Alarm

Food bank funding has been suspended, the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) budget is facing significant cuts, 47.4 million Americans experience food insecurity and inflation is impacting the budgets of so many consumers. And yet, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) decides to use its time and resources to release and promote another ‘Dirty Dozen’ list. ⁽¹⁾

EWG’s misguided focus is to convince you to spend even more money on your groceries by promoting more expensive forms of fruits and vegetables through denigrating and unfairly maligning affordable and accessible produce items.

The basis of EWG’s unscientific and gimmicky list is to attempt to convince you to substitute organic forms of produce for conventional by calling convential ‘dirty’ and using unfounded rhetoric to discourage you from buying the most popular fruits and vegetables. They do this despite the fact that decades of studies and government data have shown conventionally grown produce is safe and exceptionally nutritious. ⁽¹⁾

EWG paints organic foods as if they do not have pesticide residues. This is false.

Many consumers believe that by buying organic they are eliminating exposure to pesticide residues. This erroneous concept is often encouraged by some of those who market organic products or those who advocate for organic. There is a long list (1,700 products) of these materials allowed on organic published the l Organic Material Review Institute. The pesticides on this list are definitely real pesticides and so they have to be registered for use by the EPA like any other pesticide. ⁽²⁾

Another item about pesticides. We get much more natural pesticides than synthetic pesticides in our diet and this has nothing to do with conventional or organic growers. Bruce Ames and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, report that about 99 percent of all pesticides in the human diet are natural pesticides from plants. All plants produce toxins to protects themselves against fungi, insects and animal predators such as man. Tens of thousands of these natural pesticides have been discovered. And every species of plant contains its own set of different toxins. ⁽³⁾

EWG does not list concentration levels

And, while peer reviewed research shows EWG’s list is scientifically unsupportable, EWG themselves admit that they ignore basic tenets of toxicology and risk analysis in the development of this list.

This is a legacy they began in 1995, and one they seem committed to as evidenced by their present actions.

EWG does not list concentration levels, just the fact that certain ‘bad’ substances are detected. Why were they dangerous? Because of trace amounts of pesticides. How high the amounts? For one scare, the amount of pesticide detected was 2.5 percent of the EPA tolerance dose. ⁽⁴⁾

How bad is 2.5 percent? University of Texas Professor Frank Cross highlights findings from a number of studies showing that EPA’s risk estimates overstate pesticide exposure by as much as 99,000 to 463,000 times actual exposure. As a result, standards are actually tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—times more stringent than necessary to protect human health. An occasional exceedance of a few parts per million makes no difference. ⁽⁵⁾

EWG’s type of bad news could probably be said of every kind of produce available in the grocery study, according to a study analyzing the USDA’s annual pesticide data program. According to the study, aa child weighing about 45 pounds would have to eat 5,291 servings of blueberries, 1,890 servings of peaches, and 7,240 servings of carrots to exceed the experimental dose level at which no adverse effects are observed. ⁽⁶⁾

EWG’s thresholds are arbitrary, enabled by ultra-sensitive equipment that can detect vanishingly small residues far below established safety limits.

The key word driving this hysteria: ‘detected.’ Powerful analytical techniques have the potential to sense atoms, ions and molecules well into the parts per trillion range, and in all but the rarest of cases they present no health threat. ⁽⁷⁾

Florida and Dirty Dozen

The Make America Healthy Again coalition is at it again. An increasingly organized alliance of anti-vaccine activists, environmental legislators, and wellness influencers has crystallized into a potent disinformation network that now shapes health policy. Florida is their latest hostage. ⁽⁷⁾

The state’s Healthy Florida First Initiative claims that many everyday groceries are ‘contaminated’ and a cancer-causing time bomb. It focuses on three product areas: baby formulas, candy, and bread. To ensure no one misses the magnitude of their claims, they ginned up a website, ExposingFoodToxins.com, dressed up to look like a sober explainer of food safety science but written like a lawsuit recruitment ad.

Here’s the sad science reality: The state’s claims are scientifically ridiculous, and the campaign will end up harming, rather than improving public health. Public officials are using the kind of stark, list-driven hysteria messaging more commonly associated with advocacy campaigns and multi-district litigation rather than education-focused health agencies. ⁽⁷⁾

Scientists recognize it for what it is: ‘fear forward’ messaging; publish a random list of foods and chemicals, abuse the awesome power of modern analytical chemistry, detect traces of compounds present at the teetering edge of nothing, then frame them as toxic sludge that destroys your health and poisons your family.

Evaluations have turned hysteria into a science-bending art form with its annual Dirty Dozen report. Each year, the USDA tests more than 10,000 produce samples collected nationwide. The latest results found that more than 99% of fruits and vegetables had pesticide residues below benchmark levels set by the US EPA. EWG, and now Florida, dismisses those benchmarks (and similar standards used in Canada, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) as captured by “Big Ag’ and ‘Big Chem.’ So, it invents its own thresholds, untethered to toxicology, and then announces a fresh Dirty Dozen list. ⁽⁷⁾

Florida’s residue numbers are junk science at its worst. They aren’t peer-reviewed, and the evaluation method is not disclosed.

References

1. “EWG’s pseudo-science legacy continues,” safefruitsandveggies.com, accessed February 12, 2026
2. Steve Savage, “An unlikely pair: heavy metals and organic products,” redgreenandblue.org, September 27, 2010
3. N. Ames and L. S. Gold, “Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction,” Mutation Research, 44, 3, 2000
4. Joe Schwarcz, “Is That a Fact? (Toronto, Canada, ECW Press)
5. Angela Logomasini, “The dangerous demonization of our food,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, August 4, 2012
6. Robert Krieger, “Perspective on pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables,” Department of Entomology, UC Riverside, CA, faculty.ucr.edu
7. Jon Entine and Kevin Folta, “Viewpoint—Parst per billion, panic per bite: healthy Florida first food hysteria and the war on modern agriculture,” geneticliteracyproject.org, February 9, 2026

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