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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.
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.