There is a variety of conflicting information to be found about removing pesticides from the skin of vegetables and fruits. The organic wash that I’ve used in the past, Chico Wash,
doesn’t claim to remove any pesticides. It only claims to remove dirt and 99.999 percent of salmonella and E.coli from produce and nuts.
While I found lots of how-to advice on the Internet about
removing pesticides, I didn’t find a single wash that claims to do so. I did find a study done over a decade ago by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station on the removal of trace pesticide residues from produce. The study compared non-organic produce that was either not washed at all, rinsed only in water, and washed in “FIT, Fruit & Vegetable Wash, Organiclean, Vegi-Clean, or a 1% solution of Palmolive.”
The study found there was
“little or no difference between tap water rinsing or using a fruit and vegetable wash in reducing residues of the nine pesticides studied.” There was a difference between the unwashed produce and the ones that were rinsed in water or washed with a product. The unwashed produce had more pesticide residues.
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