Food experts have been telling modern consumers for decades to be sure to wash fruits and vegetables when they get home to remove dirt, contaminants, and pesticide residue. But washing alone may not be enough anymore.
A research project at China’s Anhui Agricultural University suggests washing produce alone will not remove traces of agricultural chemicals. The scientists applied an absorbent to fruits and vegetables to see what was left on the surface. The high tech sticky tape picked up traces of pesticides from items like rice, shrimp, cucumbers and apples.
It is anything but clear whether the trace amounts of chemicals found pose any real danger to people eating the food. The scientists described the amount of trace chemicals as being in “low concentration.”
Here’s what they did. The group sprayed fruit with common pesticides used in agriculture, thiram and carbendazim. They then washed the items the way most people would once getting them home. Then they applied sticky film to the outside of the plants to see what it would pick up. They discovered that, yes, there were traces of the pesticides detected, which is not surprising.
Carbendazim is thought to increase the risk of liver cancer, but those studies came from animals. It is also not clear how much of the chemical an animal or person would have to ingest to increase the risk of cancer or illness appreciably. A common truism is often forgotten in discussions of alleged health risks: the dose makes the poison. This means that how much of a substance one takes in matters more than what substances are ingested.
For example, eating a few apple seeds from a core will do nothing to harm anyone. But how can that be, since apple seeds contain cyanide? Simple. They contain so little cyanide that a person would have to eat (and all at once) between a few hundred and a thousand seeds, and they would have to be crushed first, before there was a risk of death.
But that hasn’t stopped the Chinese research team from warning people away from complacency through washing produce. They think consumers should peel fruits and vegetables in order to be sure.
