Pesticides on fruits and vegetables
Alternative Names
Fruits and vegetables - pesticide risks
Information
To help protect yourself and your family from pesticides on fruits and vegetables:
- Wash your hands with soap and water before you start preparing food.
- Discard the outer leaves of leafy vegetables such as lettuce. Rinse and eat the inner part.
- Rinse produce with cool water for at least 30 seconds.
- You can buy a produce wash product. Do not wash foods with dish soaps or detergents. These products can leave behind inedible residues.
- You do not need to wash produce marked "ready to eat" or "pre-washed".
- Wash produce even if you do not eat the peels (such as citrus). Otherwise, chemicals or bacteria from the outside of the produce can get to the inside when you cut/peel it.
- After washing, pat produce dry with a clean towel.
- Wash produce when you are ready to use it. Washing before storing can degrade the quality of most fruits and vegetables.
- As an option, you may want to buy and serve organic produce. Organic growers use approved organic pesticides. You may want to consider it for thin-skinned items such as peaches, grapes, strawberries, and nectarines.
To remove harmful bacteria, you must wash both organic and nonorganic fruits and vegetables.
References
Forman JA, Zajac LM. Chemical pollutants. In: Kliegman RM, St. Geme JW, Blum NJ, et al, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 22nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2025:chap 759.
US Food & Drug Administration. Food facts: raw produce: selecting and serving it safely www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/UCM174142.pdf. Updated July 2023. Accessed May 7, 2024.
Review Date:
5/4/2024
Reviewed By: Stefania Manetti, RDN, CDCES, RYT200, My Vita Sana LLC - Nourish and heal through food, San Jose, CA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
Reviewed By: Stefania Manetti, RDN, CDCES, RYT200, My Vita Sana LLC - Nourish and heal through food, San Jose, CA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.
© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.
© 1997-
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.