Apples top most pesticide-contaminated list

Altogether, USDA picked up no fewer than 56 distinct pesticides on the apples it tested, EWG reports. U.S. EPA sets limits on the maximum amount of each pesticide that can be on each food item, but there’s no limit to the number of different pesticides that can be on your food, or the total amount of contamination. Interacting chemicals can have synergistic effects at very low levels—and little research has been done on the impact of such "Chemical Cocktails" on human health.

My only concern about campaigns like EWG's Dirty Dozen is that they keep the spotlight on consumers and off of another population segment that deserves protection from the produce industry's pesticide habit: farm workers. In The Death of Ramon Gonzales (1990), Angus Wright showed that in the wake of Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, pesticide makers had to fundamentally rethink how they formulated their poisons. Silent Spring sparked a backlash against so-called "persistent" pesticides, which build up over time in soil, groundwater, and the bodies of animals. These dangerous chemicals also tended to cling even more than present-day pesticides to fruits and vegetables in the supermarket.

The agrichemical industry's response—embraced by farm owners, government regulators, and global aid institutions—was to promote pesticides that break down rapidly. But these alternatives, known as "non-persistent" chemicals, are much more dangerous at the time of application. That is to say, they're much safer for consumers, and much more dangerous for farm workers. And as Barry Estabrook shows in his masterful new book Tomatoland, workers are still routinely exposed to highly toxic chemicals on U.S. farms, to disastrous effect.

So, bottom line: Eat your fruits and veggies; buy organic when you can; if you have to prioritize, EWG's Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists are the best guides we have; and don't forget the farm workers. Check in with Pesticide Action Network of North America for the latest on the campaign to ban methyl iodide—a cancer-causing fumigant that will soon be widely used on strawberry and tomato fields. It leaves no residue on produce but severely threatens farm workers.