If you have ever grown your own fruit and vegetables to you will have an appreciation for how hard it its. Caterpillars infesting your broccoli, sucking insects all over your lemon trees, snails eating just about anything they can slime onto. It’s no wonder that farmers turn to toxic chemicals to keep these critters away. I don’t know how organic farmers do it, there is only so much garlic and chilli can do, unless you are blessed with elements and varieties that can grow on their own.
Chemicals used in pesticides make you sick
Chemicals are harmful to humans, about 200, 000 people die each year from spraying chemicals on the food we eat, and while in small doses it’s probably fine but over a life time many agree that pesticides can lead to a plethora of illnesses. They may induce adverse health effects including cancer, effects on reproduction, immune or nervous systems.
Soak your veggies and fruits in running water
To look after yourself and your loved ones, the best thing you can do when you pick up your veggies and fruit from the grocery store, or if you a lucky enough to go to a farmers market, is to lump them into a sink full of running water for 5 min to soak of any pesticide residue. Vinegar, salt or baking soda or bicarbonate of soda could help to a lot to get more of this nasty stuff off. About 75-80% of pesticides are removed by cold water washing.
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The least contaminated vegetables and fruits.
Broccoli, mushrooms, cauliflower, onions, cabbage, pineapples, sweet corn, kiwi, eggplant, avocados, sweet peas, honeydew melon, cantaloupe, asparagus, and papayas.
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The list of the most contaminated fruits and vegetables or produces.
Potatoes, kale, pears, celery, tomatoes, cherries, apples, peaches, grapes, spinach, strawberries, and nectarines.
Vegetables like cucumber, tomatoes and zucchini are easy to get any left over pesticides off. Berries and potatoes tend to absorb pesticides and need a bit more attention or are worth getting organic produce if it’s possible. Leafy greens on the other hand are not that easy and scrubbing and peeling are not really an option.
Ozone and ultrasonic cleaning can help
Ozone also combined ultrasonic cleaning (UC/03) are a great duo to go the distance and do all that you can to get rid of pesticides.
Ultrasonic waves create cavitation bubbles of free radicals which ozone gas reacts to, degrading pesticide residues further at each stage to remove 79.1% to 92.2% of pesticides found on fruit and vegetables.
Effects of ozone treatment on pesticide residues in food: a review
An average of about 200,000 people die from the toxic exposure of pesticides per year across the world, the United Nations says.(aljazeera.com,2017)
What are the know health problems from pesticide residue on food
Acute health problems from pesticide residue are eye problems, vomiting, nausea, headaches, skin problems, dizziness, and abdominal pain. Other acute effects for highly toxic pesticided after 48hrs of exposure include:
Seizures, extreme weakness, and in some cases death
Loss of consciousness, and allergic sensitization
Respiratory tract irritation, cough, or/and sore throat
Long term effects of pesticide residue consumed from fruit and vegetables
After continuous or repeated exposure cancer, congenital disabilities, impaired fertility in males, respiratory problems, dermatitis, neurotoxic effects have been found.
Cancer – exposure to pesticides has been associated with skin, lung, liver, pancreas, breast, kidney, lymphoma, leukaemia, and brain cancers in adult and children. This effect was found by many studies that examined the effect of pesticide exposure.
Negative effects on reproduction – this can include low birth weight, fetal growth, congenital disabilities, and developmental defects.
Negative effects on fertility – this can include a reduction in the amount of sperm count, sperm genetic alteration, reduction in male fertility, alteration in hormone function, and damage to the germinal epithelium.
The science of what works in removing pesticides from food
There has been a considerable amount of research into the best way to remove pesticides from food. This article is a great starting point to do the most with the least investment.
Rinsing under water and cooking were not effective in removing pesticide residue
This Korean study looked at a few different methods to remove pesticides from leafy vegetables and in short, rinsing under water and cooking were not effective. The best option was to soak veggies in a tub of running water.
Note: Running water refers to running water washing for 5 min and stagnant water refers to stagnant water washing.
WHY OZONE TO REMOVE PESTICIDES IN FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
There is a lot of research speaking to ozone’s ability to remove pesticides, it’s such a nifty product with so many uses, it’s astounding.
Let’s look at one study which is quite relevant. Chinese white cabbages were sprayed with excessive amounts of per-methrin and harvested. Samples A-C wear the controls with conventional water based cleaning. Sample D was the variation and was soaked for 15min in water, followed by operation of the ozone generator and water pump recirculation for 30 min under an ozone output rate of 500mg/h (stage 3).
More ozone will remove more pesticides and it’s better than cold water washing under a tap
While in this study, and probably because the cabbage was doused in copious amounts of pesticides, soaking in tub of water did’t remove much of the pesticides, roughly half still remained.
Ozone, on the other hand worked! 87% of this nasty pesticide was removed after half an hour but also with a higher amount of ozone.
Pesticide residue removal from vegetables by ozonation, Journal of Food Engineering, 2012.
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Combined ultrasonic cleaning with ozone (UC/03)
It doesn't stop with ozone and there are several research articles attesting to using ultrasonic cleaning with ozone to remove pesticides on fruit and vegetables.
Ultrasonic waves create cavitation bubbles of free radicals which ozone gas reacts to, degrading pesticide residues further at each stage to remove 79.1% to 92.2% of pesticides found on fruit and vegetables.
Combined ozone and ultrasonic cleaning can remove 79.1% to 92.2% of pesticides from fruit and vegetables, the highest amount by available methods.
How to get your fruit and vegetables to last longer
Another benefit of using ozone and ultrasound or ultrasonic cleaning is to get your veggies and fruit to last longer.
Ozone and ultrasonic cleaning inhibits microbial spoilage and was found to maintain storage quality of strawberries, specifically to get another 4 days out of strawberries before they ran ragged full of holes and mould, along with the impossible task of removing residual pesticides.
Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization, Volume 15 (2) – Nov 13, 2020
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