Conventional Produce is Safe to Eat, and Isn't Covered in Harmful Pesticides

The USDA pesticide residue report demonstrates the safety of conventionally grown produce, contrary to claims of anti-science activists like the Environmental Working Group

By Andrea Love of The American Council on Science and Health. Excerpts:

"The National Organic Program (NOP), established by the passage of the US Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA), is a program managed by the USDA that sets standards for what qualifies as organic farming, the rules and criteria for what farming and growing practices qualify a farm for the USDA Organic certification. That’s it. It does not mean practices are better, safer, more eco-friendly, more nutritious, or pesticide-free. (There is an extensive list of permitted pesticides and fertilizers for organic farming.)"

"The NOP centers around personal beliefs and perceived values, often focusing on “natural” substances perceived by consumers as “clean,” which mislead consumers using clever marketing ploys. As a result, people believe that organic is superior, uses fewer chemicals, leads to improved products, and is safer.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Many modern synthetic pesticides have taken natural chemicals (that are used as organic pesticides) and improved upon them using science to reduce environmental harm, off-target effects, and overall safety."

"pesticides used in conventional farming that are synthetic chemicals are regulated by the EPA and require extensive data on toxicity, environmental impact, and efficacy before approval. The USDA also manages the Pesticide Data Program (PDP), which publishes an annual residue report. The PDP is a monitoring program that assesses trace residuals of synthetic pesticides used in conventional farming. It was created in 1991 because of public outcry and misinformation about synthetic versus natural pesticides.

The false belief that “natural chemicals” are inherently safe and chemophobia aimed at synthetic chemicals means the USDA PDP residue report only includes synthetic pesticide residues used in conventional farming; organic pesticides are excluded from this regulatory oversight. Weird, right?"

"Residue levels are monitored and reported, and every year, the report demonstrates the safety of conventionally-grown produce. The residue levels tested for and reported are not levels that should concern you. If anything, the USDA’s annual Pesticide Data Program (PDP) report should give you confidence that not only are farmers using as little pesticide application as possible to grow your foods and post-harvest processing of crops reduces any trace levels to minuscule quantities. Every year, over 99% of tested samples are below safety thresholds for each pesticide in question. Last year’s report demonstrates the same. Not only did over 99% of samples tested meet all safety criteria, but 38.8% of the thousands of samples monitored had no detectable pesticide residues."

"Consider a hypothetical. Say you see the EWG’s Dirty Dozen list and their claim blackberries are “dirty” according to their wildly misleading and anti-science methods. How many blackberries would you need to eat to even pose a risk?

In this instance, you have to convert the pesticide tolerance level to the acceptable daily intake (ADI), the amount of a substance that a human could ingest every day for their entire life and experience no adverse effects. The ADI level for malathion, set by the World Health Organization is 0.3 mg/kg/day. [2]

A person weighing 70 kg (154 lbs) would have to ingest 21 milligrams of malathion daily to reach the ADI. If we eat blackberries with the highest level detected at 0.45 ppm (0.45 milligrams of malathion per 1,000 grams (kg) of blackberries), that 70 kg individual would need to eat 46.7 kilograms, over 90 pounds of blackberries daily to reach malathion’s ADI."

"We can detect levels of substances that are irrelevant to our health, measured in units like parts per million, parts per billion, or parts per trillion. We have to compare those detected levels to their potential risk and your potential exposure.

This is a fundamental challenge when discussing pesticides or, really, any chemical (even though everything is chemicals).

The challenge is made worse when groups like the EWG take these minuscule quantities of detected pesticides and manipulate them to scare people from perfectly safe and more affordable conventional foods (read their methods here).

Of course, EWG is funded by large organic farming industry partners"