Organic or conventionally treated produce?

Shouldn't all food be safe to eat?

Buying groceries shouldn't be so confusing. In order to eat healthy you should be able to buy fruits and vegetables from the store and feel good about it. Only that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. You now have two sections. Organic and Not organic. (typically not found side by side so you can't be stunned by the difference in cost as easily).
I feel that every other week, the health section of popular web "news" sites will have a link to the dirty dozen of produce. Which is a list of foods they suggest you should buy organic. Download a PDF here for a list.

I'm sure you've all looked through them. I'm sure that most of us feel that it would be best if we would always buy the organic version. But that gets expensive. Well maybe you can not buy the dirty dozen and substitute something from the clean list instead. Unfortunately it seems many of these foods are like primary colors, there is no substitution for them. Frustrating right?
So what I want to know is, "Just how dangerous are "non-organic" foods?" Particularly ones from the dirty dozen. Because people are seriously concerned and perhaps confused. Check out this link where someone posed the question, Which is healthier? An Organic cookie or a conventional pesticide treated Strawberry?" You get to see the range of concern in the answers. Those that won't touch the pesticide berry. Those that are concerned about the quantity of berries they would eat. Those warning that washing the berries isn't going to help. To someone saying the health benefits of the berries outweighs the risk of the pesticides that would be ingested. It's an interesting read. All the readers are informed at some level. I would guess none are experts. And like the majority of "Health News" from news sites and such, there is no conclusion or researched answer given.
Here is another example. This one seems to have spent some money on some research and had me hopeful that there would be something to give clarity to my question.
Then you get to the end and I feel like they stack on disclaimers that nullifies everything they set out to prove. Although I do think they made a good point with describing points at which it might be wise to stick with organics. (While pregnant and for infants). That's just limiting risk tho' which is smart. It's not saying that it's definitely a problem.

Obviously, I should go digging for more official reports. A simple google search is not enough. First I'm going to give you a little lesson in Google searching. You can limit your search to a particular domain by including the following after your search terms. Example, type the following into a google search, pesticides in food site: epa.gov
The "site:xyz.com" is the clever bit obviously. Here is a link that has many more tricks.

What did I find in terms of more official reads. Well not as much as I'd like. For example, how's this answer for avoiding the actual question being asked? You need to click on this one. Really. Then do me a favor and click 1 "not helpful". And provide some feedback if you agree that tho' technically correct, it's as if a politician came up with the answer.

To be fair. There are many other links you can browse through. Although, I never found any to give me a huge boost of confidence. So I've emailed them directly. I'm curious what kind of a response I will get. Here are some official links regarding our subject.
Pesticide Residues in Food
Minimizing Pesticide Residues in Food
Healthy food practices
Produce Safety
A PDF about Food Washing

Another thing that drives me crazy is when they use percentages of a number that doesn't mean anything to you to explain something. For example, if they say that simple rinsing will remove 90% of the pesticides. Some people will find that to be great. Others will look at the 10% that is still there and not want any part of that even if that level of exposure is less toxic than spending a day breathing in Manhattan. (I don't know if that's true, but I'm sure that my example brought more clarity to the subject than saying 90% clean).

Then there is the whole subject of what Organic means. Well people think it means pesticide free. Well from what I've gathered, that's not the case. They can use organic pesticides.
Pesticides, if used, must be derived from natural sources, not synthetically manufactured. Also, these pesticides must be applied using equipment that has not been used to apply any synthetic materials for the past three years, and the land being planted cannot have been treated with synthetic materials for that period either.
read more here.

Ugh! That really muddies the waters for me. Is a pesticide derived for natural sources less harmful than a chemically derived one?

I may as well add this link to the mix in regards to "organic" Common Myths of Organic Gardening. If you are buying organic. You owe it to yourself to read the information found here.

Well there you have it. 3 hours of digging through stuff looking for answers and I end up writing something with no obvious conclusion. Only an opinion. Just like all the stuff I've read.

If I wanted to follow common practice I'd suggest you download the dirty dozen list and tell you to buy organic. But I'm starting to think you might be just as well off to buy those things and just wash them well. (but the pesticides are inside!!) Yeah well as we saw above organic approved pesticides are likely inside too. So unless you have access to "pesticide free" (that would be different than organic). I think we are going to have to take our chances.

(This was all brought about because we will have a juicer here soon and a good percentage of the food going into the juicer are on that dirty dozen list.)