How to avoide pesticides on produce - the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15

We’re lucky that a greater variety of organic produce is getting easier to find in our local stores and markets. But in a way it makes our grocery shopping harder. Having more choice creates a bit of a dilemma: should we buy only organic produce – a more expensive option – or pick and choose what we do and don’t buy organic?

Nobody wants to hem and haw over whether to buy the organic kiwi, which is why I’m hooked on Environmental Working Group’s annual Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides. The guide lists the produce that has the highest pesticide load when it reaches your table along with the produce with the lowest pesticide load.

 

To make their research easy to use the have created the Dirty Dozen (produce with the highest pesticide load) and the Clean 15 (produce with the lowest pesticide load).

Finding a safe and effective sunscreen



Environmental Working Group's guide to safe and effective sunscreen makes sun safety easy.

When it’s cold out I forget all about sunscreen.  

Even though we half froze over the May long weekend, I noticed on the Sunday night that both of my children had sunburned cheeks from an afternoon spent at an ultimate frisbee tournament.  

It’s the kind of thing I kick myself about because I should know better; sunscreen season is year round not just warm sunny days. 

And so it begins, the annual search for sunscreen that’s safe and effective, a sunscreen that does what it needs to do without being loaded with toxic ingredients that scare me more than sunburns.