Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Find a Better Way To Wash Pesticides Off Your Apples (cnet.com)
According to a new study, the best way to reduce pesticides from your supermarket apple is to use a baking soda solution. The discovery was made by a team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. They compared the effectiveness of plain tap water, a commercial bleach solution and a baking soda/water mix in removing pesticides from apples. CNET reports: The scientists started with organic Gala apples and applied the fungicide thiabendazole and the insecticide phosmet before testing the different washing liquids. "The baking soda solution was the most effective at reducing pesticide," a release on the study notes. "After 12 and 15 minutes, 80 percent of the thiabendazole was removed, and 96 percent of the phosmet was removed, respectively." The researchers say the industry-standard approach of washing fruit in a bleach solution for two minutes after harvest is not an effective way to completely remove pesticides. They also found the fungicide thiabendazole penetrated into the apple peel much more than the insecticide. Apple lovers would need to remove the peel to also get rid of the pesticide that wasn't washed off with the baking soda solution. The researchers published the findings this week in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
yes, the row crews do #2 and keep on picking.
Any ill effects from the pesticide or fungicide in low doses? No? No chronic effects at low doses, either? No bio accumulation?
Then I don't care.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
How about if I just continue to wash apples with a drop of dish soap and some running water before I eat them. Also has the benefit of cleaning my hands while I clean the apple!
I use a power washer. Sometimes a sandblaster for really tough pesticides.
I imagine the baking soda would be safer and cheaper for cleaning produce than a bleach solution.
Mass market varieties are generally pretty gross.
Bleaching after picking is to remove contaminants and disease causing bacteria from the soil. This added layer of washing with base solution should be targeted to consumers not at trying to replace safer industry practices. Combination requires new machinery for production scale so is impractical.
Apple lovers would need to remove the peel to also get rid of the pesticide
So Mac was right! The skin of those things is riddled with toxins!
Wash the pesticide from your apple using plastic fragment laden, pharmaceutical heavy, illicit drug infested tap water! The solution was right there in front of us the entire time!
Don't buy fruit laden with pesticide.
... for 15 minutes before eating?
Seriously? That's not a solution, that's an illustration of how unrealistic the goal is.
Plain old soap?
The study started with organic, pesticide-free apples. The researchers sprayed the pesticides on the apples, then washed them off with the various solutions.
This method does not really mimic real life, where pesticides are sprayed on plants repeatedly over periods of weeks or months. In real life, some of the pesticides would soak into the apples, where it wouldn't be possible to wash them off using ANY solution.
good post Gesture Lock Screen
Buy apple without poison on them. Yes I know, the organic apples are more expensive and some people have the odassity to sell you apples with spots (not that they taste worse, often they taste better). And yes if all would do that, you could not have large monocultures anymore making the apples more expensive. Still you do not have to eat poison and maybe we have a chance to get our insects back, which could increase the yield.
>. You sound like an expert in the area. I'd like to hear your explanation for growing pollen allergies, food allergies, food intolerance, etc. Also - are there any long term (i.e. tens of years) studies confirming that there are no ill nor chronic effects? If no, then at best you can claim: "we don't know".
I'd like to hear your evidence for ANY of what you just claimed. If no, then the best you can claim is "is I don't know - what I'm talking about"
There are no pesticides on The apples from my garden. Yes they have worm holes. And i consider that natural.
I'm afraid the marketing has tricked you.
EU organic regulations are that the pesticides must be of natural (impure) origin rather than being produced synthetically (and more pure). Safer pesticides which aren't readily available from natural sources aren't allowed, so organic farms must use the following more dangerous pesticides.
Here are some pesticides used in organic agriculture, with their median lethal doses:
Copper(II) sulfate is used as a fungicide and is also used in conventional agriculture (LD50 300 mg/kg). Conventional agriculture has the option to use the less toxic Mancozeb (LD50 4,500 to 11,200 mg/kg)
Boric acid is used as stomach poison that target insects (LD50: 2660 mg/kg).
Pyrethrin comes from chemicals extracted from flowers of the genus Pyrethrum (LD50 of 370 mg/kg). Its potent toxicity is used to control insects.
Lime sulphur (aka calcium polysulfide) and sulfur are considered to be allowed, synthetic materials[177] (LD50: 820 mg/kg)
Rotenone is a powerful insecticide that was used to control insects (LD50: 132 mg/kg). Despite the high toxicity of Rotenone to aquatic life and some links to Parkinson disease the compound is still allowed in organic farming as it is a naturally occurring compound.[178]
Bromomethane is a gas that is still used in the nurseries of Strawberry organic farming[179]
Azadirachtin is a wide spectrum very potent insecticide. Almost non toxic to mammals (LD50 in rats is > 3,540 mg/kg) but affects beneficial insects.
A friend who was a fruit farmer blamed pesticides on his cancer, and years ago started what we now shop as "organic"
Problem with your friend's logic is that he (she?) has a sample size of one. While it's not unreasonable that pesticides could have played a role, it's impossible to determine the likelihood of pesticides as a cause without some form of population study. We know that smoking causes cancer because we have population studies so that we can confidently say what the increased risk is and that there is a clear causal (and correlated) link. While it wouldn't be surprising at all if pesticides resulted in cancer, if there aren't properly scientific population studies then it is little more than an educated guess which should be frustrating to all of us.
The whole organic movement is based on this misapprehension. The idea of organics is logical. Less exposure to toxic stuff logically should in principle correlate with improved health. Good idea. Problem has been that it has turned out to be really hard to pin down any actual measurable health benefit from organic foods. All evidence seems to indicate there is no nutrition advantage and so far it's unclear if there are any meaningful secondary health benefits. Some companies have realized economic benefits but it's not (yet) clear if organic foods really result in better health for consumers. As logical as the idea of organics is, sometimes what seems logical doesn't actually result in the expected outcome. I'm not arguing that eating organic foods is a bad idea (I think it's very reasonable if you can afford it) as long as you understand that there isn't (yet) any clear evidence that it results in better outcomes.
"Even at relatively low levels, organophosphates may be hazardous to human health.
This is an unsupported an meaningless statement even if it ultimately is actually true. There are lots of things that MAY be hazardous to our health. That doesn't equal evidence that they ARE actually hazardous. The entire reason we do scientific studies is to figure out if there is a causal relationship. We know cigarettes are hazardous to your health because we've done the work to figure it out. While there is nothing wrong with avoiding a possible hazard (like pesticides) out of an abundance of caution, it's important to understand what constitutes solid evidence. You have to demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between exposure and negative health outcomes while controlling for other factors.
The pesticides act on acetylcholinesterase,[14] an enzyme found in the brain chemicals closely related to those involved in ADHD, thus fetuses and young children, where brain development depends on a strict sequence of biological events, may be most at risk.
Several problems here. First off, Wikipedia is NOT a good place to cite "evidence" relating to scientific health studies. Second, that statement implies a relationship but doesn't actually show one. The fact that one group of chemicals can in principle affect another group of chemicals does not equal a causal chain in vivo. That sentence is carefully constructed to imply a negative relationship without actually going to the bother of actually needing to demonstrate one. Its a statement of fear, not of evidence and it certainly doesn't demonstrate even a correlation much less a causation between pesticides and ADHD. Third, ADHD is a disorder whose causes are NOT well understood nor is it easily diagnosed. You really couldn't have picked a worse example to support your case.
Am I the only one that read the topic as "Scientists find a better way to watch testicles on your apples"?
Maybe they should try picking apples from the tree instead of collecting the ones that already fell to the ground, if that is the goal.
You haven't actually been to an apple orchard have you? Here's a few little tips. Apples ARE picked from the trees. The ones on the ground aren't the ones you buy in the store. Also, soil comes in the form of dust which doesn't just stay on the ground. Also, there are small creatures (worms, flies, etc) that can track soil onto fruit still on the tree as well as from the hands of the person picking the fruit. There also are other microbes, fungus, and other concerning pathogens that exist even on fruit that has never touched the ground.
Why didn't they compare it to the soap and water people have been using for 100 years?
The post I was referring to claimed that micro-exposure wasn't a problem. "Taking small amounts of most types of poison won't poison you a little bit. Usually it does nothing." I disagree.
Gotcha. Yes you are correct. Small doses of certain toxins may not have easily observable effects but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Lead is a great example. It's not easy to observe the effects of small doses of lead spread widely in the population because it's not acutely toxic in small quantities and the negative effects can be difficult to tie to specific individuals.
What has always alarmed me is how casual we are as a society about putting all sorts of toxic crap into production and daily use without even the vaguest idea whether or how it might be harmful. If it doesn't immediately result in people bursting into flame upon exposure we shrug and decide it must be "safe". We're really good at finding solutions to problems right in front of our face (pesticides kill pests) but bad at understanding or caring about the wider implications of those solutions (pesticides also kill bees) if they aren't immediately obvious. And of course for some of us a profit motive results in all other factors being studiously ignored.
If you remove the peal to avoid pesticide, you might as well just have some sugar water or filtered apple juice, there is nothing healthful without the peal.
https://nutritionfacts.org/?fwp_search=apple+peal&fwp_content_type=video
Before population studies on smoking, we had 'samples of one'. Many, many samples. For many centuries.
We have many many samples of one on homeopathy too. Samples of one mean precisely dick unless they are very carefully compiled. Those are called anecdotes and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Now, of course we 'know' smoking causes some cancer. Did it cause Joe Sixpack's individual case of lung cancer? Joe may say so. No one can prove it with absolute certainty. It's an educated guess. But it's probable.
My wife is a pathologist and I've spoken to her about this exact topic. According to her, in a lot of cases we do know with near absolute certainty or as close as we will ever get. There are some forms of lung cancer that we know enough about the pathology and have enough population studies that it if the person smoked it is unreasonable to presume any other cause as likely. I have an uncle that had (and died from) one of these and yes he had smoked for a long time which is how the topic came up.
And so it is with this guy's friend. Like Joe, the farmer is probably right that his cancer was triggered by farm chemicals. The research is there. It may not yet have the same amount of community acceptance Joe's assertions do. Just give it time.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if you are entirely correct. I'm just cautioning about taking anecdotes too seriously even if they are seemingly logical. There is a strong tendency to inappropriately apply a sort of transitive property to phenomena. Chemical A affects Process B and Process B is critical to Pathway C. Therefore Chemical A affects Pathway C. Except it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the effect is more complicated or it has a negligible effect. Or it's a spurious correlation. This problem can be quite frustrating.
His friend is not just a sample size of one. His friend is a sample size of one where exposure cross-section is drastically different than the general population.
Correct but that still does not provide sufficient evidence to indicate a causal link between his exposure and cancer most likely. You have no way to really know if the cancer came from the chemicals or if he had some other exposure or genetic disposition that was the proximal cause of the disease. It's no different than taking a homeopathic "cure" and then declaring yourself to be better when you recover. You can't tell if the cure worked of it it was just a placebo all by yourself. Unless you can find additional individuals afflicted similarly you can never really know.
... and now I need a new notebook.
reason defies logic
How much more does baking soda remove after the bleach bath that industry uses versus how much more a simple dish soap and water rinse removes after the industry bleach bath?
... must use the following more dangerous pesticides.
Here are some pesticides used in organic agriculture, with their median lethal doses:
Did you not read your own post? Those substances are demonstrably not dangerous to people.
median lethal dose of 4,500mg/kg? So essentially not toxic. Down at 370mg/kg is where noticeable effects even start: So if you weigh only 90lb and eat an apple smothered with half an ounce of Pyrethrum you still have a 50% chance of surviving. There is a lot of shit, which if you ate a half ounce smothered onto a 3 to 3.5oz apple would kill you.
math isn't even needed, to see how wrong this part of your post was
Azadirachtin is a wide spectrum very potent insecticide. Almost non toxic to mammals
for consideration dicamba, the inorganic pesticide is 757mg/kg LD50 in rats
At the point I assume any further nuance, like comparatively greater importance of acute toxicity vs lethal dose for the case of pesticide consumption, is just beyond you
I soak my produce in Bragg's Organic Vinegar. It works great!
> if you weigh only 90lb and eat an apple smothered with half an ounce of Pyrethrum you still have a 50% chance of surviving.
Yes you'll probably *survive* after eating organic produce. Is that the standard you use for choosing the best foods, "it probably won't outright kill me the first time"?
The simple fact is, the regulations for organic labeling are that to labeled "organic" they are not allowed to use the less toxic pesticides; they must use more toxic ones which are extracted rather than synthesised. So the GP's idea of "get (organic) produce that doesn't have Poison on it" is exactly backwards. The organic label means it uses the *more* toxic pesticides.
You probably won't die the first time you drink natural, unprocessed water from a lake, either - so I guess that's what you do? I prefer the more pure, processed water because it's safer. Personally, I prefer pure and safe rather than natural. In nature, primates have a MAXIMUM life span of about 20-30 years, and an average of about 7 years. No thanks.
.. on the human body? Then yeah, you should fucking care. But enjoy your blissful ignorance.