I have often wondered which fruit and vegetables take the biggest hit when it comes to pesticides and which fruit and veg is the most important to buy organic.

Environmental Working Group (EWG), a public health advocacy group has released its 7th annual report which analyses USA government data on 53 fruits and vegetables and identifies which have the most and least pesticides after washing and peeling.

Although this is USA research, it gives a good indicator to pesticide loads in non-organic fruit and vegetables generally.

Apples moved up three spots from last year, replacing celery at the top of the most-contaminated list; 92% of apples contained two or more pesticides.  Onions were found to be lowest in pesticides.

For those who can’t afford to buy organic or don’t want to, you can side-step a lot of pesticides by switching fruit.   Less than 10% of pineapple, mango and avocado samples showed pesticides. For vegetables, asparagus, sweet corn and onions had no residue on 90% or more of samples.  It is possible to lower your pesticide intake substantially by avoiding the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated produce.  The EWG calculates that “consumers who choose five servings of fruits and vegetables a day from EWG’s Clean 15 list rather than from the Dirty Dozen can lower the volume of pesticides they consume by 92 percent.”

1. Onions
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet peas
7. Mangoes
8. Aubergine
9. Melon
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

A study from the Harvard Business School linked higher exposure to pesticides with the risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.