Pesticide data program: 30 years of food residue data and trends

The USDA’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2021 and is one of the world’s largest monitoring programs for pesticide residues. The PDP database contains over 42 million data points for a pesticide paired to a commodity that have resulted from the analysis of nearly 310,000 food samples of 126 different commodities. Over the decades of the program, sampling methods and infrastructure, major milestones, developments, and accomplishments have unfolded. Comparisons of data for four commodities that were in the program early on illustrate that over time pesticide residues on foods change, particularly when new pesticides are registered, and updated data, such as those provided by PDP, are key for exposure and risk assessment.