The Dirty Dozen is a yearly list of the 12 fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues, published by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The list is based on analysis of testing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it’s designed to help shoppers decide where to spend their money on organic produce. The 2024 list includes many everyday staples you probably buy regularly.
The 2024 Dirty Dozen List
These 12 items tested positive for the most pesticide residues, ranked from highest to lowest:
- Strawberries
- Spinach
- Kale, collard greens, and mustard greens
- Grapes
- Peaches
- Pears
- Nectarines
- Apples
- Bell and hot peppers
- Celery
- Blueberries
- Green beans
Strawberries have held the top spot for several years running. These items tend to have thin or edible skins, which means you eat the outer surface where residues concentrate. Produce with thick, removable peels (like avocados or pineapples) tends to carry far less residue into your body.
How the List Is Created
The EWG doesn’t do its own lab testing. Instead, it analyzes data from the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program, which tests thousands of produce samples each year. The USDA prepares samples the way a consumer would, washing and peeling them as appropriate before testing. So the residues detected are what you’d actually be exposed to after normal kitchen prep, not what’s on the fruit straight from the field.
The EWG ranks produce based on several factors: how many different pesticides were detected, what percentage of samples had residues, and how many pesticides showed up on a single sample. An item can rank high because it has many different pesticides detected across samples, even if the amount of each one is small.
What Scientists Say About the Rankings
The Dirty Dozen list is one of the most widely shared pieces of food safety content each year, but it has drawn significant criticism from food scientists and toxicologists. A detailed critique from Cornell University points out that the EWG’s ranking method has never been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, and no scientific organization has endorsed it.
The core issue is that the list counts whether a pesticide is present, but doesn’t weigh how much is there. In toxicology, the dose is what determines whether something is harmful. Nearly all fruit and vegetable samples have residue levels far below the EPA’s safety thresholds, often by a factor of a million or more. The EPA sets these limits at levels it considers to carry “reasonable certainty of no harm,” and any produce exceeding them is subject to government seizure.
Cornell researchers also flagged a counterintuitive quirk in the methodology: a farmer who rotates between several pesticides to prevent pest resistance (a good agricultural practice) will score worse on the EWG scale than one who uses large amounts of a single pesticide. The ranking effectively penalizes variety of residues rather than measuring actual risk.
Perhaps the most common concern among nutrition scientists is that the list discourages people from eating fruits and vegetables. Consumers already eat far fewer servings than recommended, and this is especially true for lower-income families who may not be able to afford organic options. The health benefits of eating a strawberry, even a conventionally grown one, far exceed any realistic risk from the trace pesticide residue on it. Plants also produce their own natural defense chemicals, and the amount of these naturally occurring compounds is estimated to exceed applied pesticide residues by 10,000-fold.
How to Reduce Pesticide Residues at Home
If you’d rather minimize your exposure without going fully organic, washing makes a real difference. A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that soaking apples in a baking soda solution for 15 minutes, followed by a freshwater rinse, removed all surface pesticide residues. Plain tap water removed some but not all. A simple solution of about a teaspoon of baking soda per two cups of water works well for soaking most produce.
Peeling also removes residues, though you lose fiber and nutrients concentrated in the skin. For leafy greens like spinach and kale, removing outer leaves and rinsing thoroughly under running water helps. None of these methods address pesticides that have been absorbed into the flesh of the fruit, but surface residues account for the majority of what’s detected.
The Clean Fifteen: Lowest-Residue Produce
The EWG also publishes a companion list of the 15 items with the least pesticide contamination. If you’re trying to prioritize where to buy organic, these are the items where conventional is likely fine:
- Avocados
- Sweet corn
- Pineapple
- Onions
- Papaya
- Sweet peas (frozen)
- Asparagus
- Honeydew melon
- Kiwi
- Cabbage
- Watermelon
- Mushrooms
- Mangoes
- Sweet potatoes
- Carrots
The pattern is clear: thick-skinned produce you peel before eating (avocados, pineapple, melon) consistently lands on this list. So do vegetables with tightly packed layers like onions and cabbage, where the outer surfaces that absorb sprays are discarded.
A Practical Way to Use the List
The most balanced approach is to treat the Dirty Dozen as a shopping prioritization tool, not a danger list. If your budget allows some organic purchases but not all, the list helps you focus those dollars on strawberries, spinach, and grapes rather than avocados and onions. But skipping fruits and vegetables entirely because of pesticide concerns would be far worse for your health than eating conventionally grown produce. The nutrients, fiber, and disease-fighting compounds in these foods are not in question, regardless of how they were grown.