Four of the five most frequently detected chemicals on fruit and vegetables in the Environmental Working Group’s annual Dirty Dozen list are fungicides linked to endocrine disruption and reproductive system damage in humans.
The Dirty Dozen, part of EWG’s 2024 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, identifies the 12 non-organic, or conventional, types of fresh produce with the most pesticides. It is based on data from tests conducted on 46 fruits and vegetables by the USDA and the FDA.
According to the report, which has been published annually since 2004, “EWG determined that 75 percent of all conventional fresh produce sampled had residues of potentially harmful pesticides. But for items on the Dirty Dozen, a whopping 95 percent of samples contain pesticides.”
Two of the five fungicides, fludioxonil and pyrimethanil, also show up in the highest average concentrations of any pesticides found on the Dirty Dozen.
EWG notes that, “Although the potential human health harms of fungicides aren’t as well studied as other pesticides, emerging evidence suggests many widely used fungicides may disrupt the hormone system.”
Highlights from this year’s Dirty Dozen:
The Shopper’s Guide also includes The Clean Fifteen—produce that had the lowest amounts of pesticide residues, according to EWG’s analysis. This year avocados and sweet corn were the cleanest, with less than 2 percent of samples of each showing any detectable pesticides.