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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.
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.
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!
The baking soda mix is indeed a solution, as the inorganic compound dissolves completely in water.
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.
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.
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.