Pesticides are often put on fruits and veggies to get rid of bugs and worms that eat them. But for years, people have known that these pesticides have a lot of chemicals and ingredients that are bad for them. The US has banned some chemicals and pesticides, but farmers will still use others that are just as dangerous.
Consumer Reports has been looking into chemicals and how they hurt food for a long time. “It’s two steps forward and one step back, and sometimes even two steps back,” said James E. Rogers, who is in charge of food safety at Consumer Reports.
Consumer Reports just put out a full review of chemicals on crops after looking at data from seven years. Almost sixty different fruits and veggies were looked at. These included fresh, dried, and canned fruits and vegetables.
The study says that chemicals are very dangerous for 20% of the crops that were looked at. Strawberries, bell peppers, green beans, blueberries, and potatoes were some of the most popular ones they looked into. A study showed that green beans still had chemicals from a pesticide that hadn’t been legal in the US for ten years still on them.
Even so, the study did show that most of the crops did not have any pesticide residue left over, and almost all of the organic options did not have any residue either. Rogers says, “That makes it easier to find the problems and come up with targeted solutions.”
statistics for Consumer Reports’ study came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which keeps track of pesticide statistics. When it comes to most fruits and vegetables, the risk of pesticides is not very high, and the EPA says that people can still eat a lot of these foods every day without getting sick. Ten foods are more likely to make you sick, and kids and women who are pregnant are told to eat less of them. Everyone else should still be aware of how much of these foods they eat.