Fresh produce is often marketed as “clean eating,” yet it is also one of the most common vehicles for foodborne exposure because it is frequently eaten raw or only lightly cooked. Contamination can occur at any stage of the production and supply chain, and it is not limited to one farming style.

Evidence summarized in research on organic foods stresses that pathogenic microorganisms can be introduced during production, harvest, handling, and distribution, with shared routes across organic and conventional systems—especially via animal activity, irrigation water, manure use, and weather conditions. That means “organic” and “local” can be excellent choices for many reasons, but they are not automatic substitutes for safe handling and cleaning.

From a safety standpoint, produce faces three broad hazard categories: physical hazards (dust, sand, wood or metal fragments), chemical hazards (including pesticides and chemicals associated with packaging or farm inputs), and biological hazards (pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and norovirus). Outbreak reports and reviews of produce safety challenges describe how many commodity types can serve as transmission vehicles, including leafy greens and salad mixes, sprouts, cantaloupe, berries, mangos, and cut produce.

Cut fruits and vegetables generally carry a higher microbial risk profile than intact produce because cutting increases surface area, releases nutrients that support growth, and adds extra handling steps. Storage also matters: under certain conditions, pathogens can survive and sometimes grow on produce surfaces or in plant fluids; controlled low temperatures can reduce bacterial growth compared with warmer conditions.

Washing is not a magic eraser, but it is one of the few consumer-controlled steps that can reduce exposure, especially for produce eaten raw. The best-supported baseline is thorough washing with running water, paired with clean handling practices to avoid transferring contaminants from the outside to the inside during cutting. For chemical residues, a comparative study on five leafy vegetables artificially contaminated with pesticides found that running water produced the highest average residue reduction (77.0% ± 18.0), while detergent performed the worst (43.7% ± 14.5); boiling also reduced residues on average, but effectiveness varied by pesticide and method.

For microbes, a separate evaluation under “retail crisping” conditions showed that antimicrobial wash solutions (peracetic acid, hypochlorous acid, accelerated hydrogen peroxide) reduced pathogens and background microbes, while water alone was ineffective at reducing foodborne pathogens and cross-contamination risks in that setting. The practical takeaway is straightforward: washing helps, but method matters, and some problems (especially cross-contamination in shared wash water) require approaches beyond plain immersion.