In what has become an annual ritual, in recent weeks the 2023 EWG Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ has been the target of attacks on social media by uninformed people and groups. We trust our audience to judge our work for themselves but want to highlight some of the misleading statements and outright misinformation being spread online.
Who funds EWG?
Myth: EWG is a “for-profit organization funded by large organic farms.”
Fact: EWG is an independent nonprofit organization, a 501(c)(3) largely funded by individual donations and grants from charitable foundations.
Between 2013 and 2018, EWG received annual grants from the Organic Voices Action Fund, another nonprofit, to support our joint advocacy campaign on genetically engineered foods. That grant support expired in 2018.
Myth: EWG’s Shopper’s Guide and other research are “pay to play” – funded by corporations and industries.
Fact: EWG accepts no programmatic funding from brands or businesses operating in the industries or product categories we research, evaluate and rate – including food, household cleaning supplies and personal care products. For more details please visit our funding reports page.
What’s safe?
Myth: Pesticide residues found on conventional produce fall within the Environmental Protection Agency’s legal limits. That means they’re safe.
Fact: The EPA’s approach is “safe until proven unsafe.” But levels of pesticide residues on food that fall within the agency’s legal limits are not automatically safe. In fact, research has shown that in many instances, EPA-permitted levels are highly toxic to humans.
Most recently, in 2021 the EPA banned chlorpyrifos, a highly toxic pesticide, from use on food. For years prior to the ban, overwhelming independent scientific research showed that even low exposures to the chemical could harm brain function in children.
Consumers were repeatedly reassured that chlorpyrifos was safe by the industry and by the EPA, right up until the moment when the agency banned it from use in agriculture because its scientists determined the pesticide wasn’t so safe after all.
Myth: Organic farmers also use pesticides to grow their crops.
Fact: It’s true that there are a handful of naturally derived and synthetic pesticides allowed for use in organic agriculture. But unlike the hundreds of synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional produce – many of which are banned in other countries – all pesticides allowed on organics are rigorously reviewed by the National Organic Standards Board, part of the Department of Agriculture.
The board, whose members are appointed by the secretary of Agriculture, is “made up of dedicated public volunteers, including organic growers, handlers, retailers, environmentalists, scientists, USDA-accredited certifying agents and consumer advocates,” according to the USDA.
The stringent standards set by the board “are designed to allow natural substances in organic farming while prohibiting synthetic substances,” the USDA says. There are a few exceptions, including vaccines for cattle and pheromones used to confuse insects on fruit.
All pesticides used in the U.S. must be registered with the EPA, but the agency largely uses toxicity studies conducted by pesticide manufacturers rather than independent research.
Myth: EWG exaggerates the potential risks of consuming the pesticides found on conventional produce.
Fact: Pesticides are chemicals whose sole purpose is to kill living organisms.
The EPA does not study the effects on people of exposure to multiple pesticides – even though USDA researchers found 54 different pesticides on conventional blueberry samples and 84 on green beans. Those weren’t even the most they found – there were 103 pesticides on kale, collard and mustard greens, and 101 pesticides on hot peppers and bell peppers.
For most people, the main route of exposure is pesticide residue on food. When people stop consuming conventional produce and switch to an all-organic diet, studies show that pesticide exposures drop almost immediately. They go up again once people return to eating conventionally grown foods.
No one knows exactly what it means for Americans that our bodies have been so polluted by pesticide exposure. But studies of one type of pesticide used on some fruits and vegetables, organophosphate compounds, have found that children with high exposures had a greater risk of impaired intelligence and neurological problems.
What’s the science behind EWG’s Shopper’s Guide?
Myth: Scientists have debunked the Shopper’s Guide.
Fact: Science supports EWG’s ongoing concern about children’s higher potential for health risks from pesticide exposure.
Kids often consume much larger quantities of fruits, vegetables and juice than adults relative to their body weight. And their immune and detoxifying systems, not to mention their nervous system development, are far from fully formed, making them particularly vulnerable to damage from chemicals. The risk posed by pesticide exposure is even greater for the developing fetus.
The venerable American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents the nation’s pediatricians, became so concerned about young children’s exposure to pesticides that it issued an exhaustive report on the issue, “Pesticide Exposure in Children,” in 2012.
After reviewing all the routes of exposure, including food, the academy warned parents and policymakers to lower both exposure to and use of toxic agricultural pesticides. “For many children, diet may be the most influential source of pesticides,” the report said.
The AAP recommends that pediatricians urge parents to turn “toward reliable resources that provide information on the relative pesticide content of various fruits and vegetables.” It cites EWG’s Shopper’s Guide as one of two sources for parents.
Since the early 1970s, Dr. Philip Landrigan has studied the risks to children of pesticide and chemical exposures. His work was largely responsible for the removal of lead from paint and gasoline. And he was the principal author of the pivotal 1993 National Academy of Sciences study, “Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children,” which led Congress in 1996 to set safety standards for pesticides on foods in the Food Quality Protection Act.
“Children, especially babies in the womb, are much more vulnerable to pesticides than adults,” Landrigan said. “The hazards of pesticide exposure in early childhood include learning disabilities, shortened attention span, loss of IQ and possibly cancer.”
Noted expert and author Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University recently said of EWG’s Shopper’s Guide: “We would be better off eating fewer of them [pesticides] and producing food in ways that use less of them. If EWG is pushing farming in that direction, it needs it.”
Who are EWG’s critics?
Myth: Regular attacks against EWG and the Shopper’s Guide come from unbiased sources.
Fact: EWG is regularly attacked by trade groups and industry front groups – sources that are anything but unbiased.
The Alliance for Food and Farming is a marketing and public relations organization for the major conventional fruit and vegetable growers, which produce the crops consistently on EWG’s Dirty Dozen list of foods that have the most pesticide residues.
The International Food Information Council is a food industry front group funded by “broad-based food, beverage and agricultural industries.”
These groups are far from impartial because their leadership is made up of representatives from companies invested in protecting the market viability of conventional fruits and vegetables.
